


April in Paris

by EdmondZippo



Series: April in Paris [1]
Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Paris, Artist Ben Solo, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo is a Mess, Bisexual Rose Tico, Broken Heart, Colonnes de Buren, Dark Thoughts, Drunk Rey, Drunkenness, Eating pizza, Eventual Romance, F/M, Falling In Love, Feelings, First Kiss, First Meetings, Gay quarter, Hux is a gallerist, Hux is nice but also selfish, Hux only drinks IPA, Idiots in Love, Inspired by Twitter, Jilted Rey, Kylo Ren is the voice in your head, Le Marais, Love, Mutual Pining, Nice Armitage Hux, Paris (City), Pining, Portraits, Rey & Rose Tico Friendship, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey eats a hot dog, Rey is like NOPE, Rey runs away from things, Reylo - Freeform, Reylo Prompt, Romance, Sad Rey (Star Wars), Twitter Prompt, Voe's portrait is Ben's greatest work, Wet Dream, Wine in the bath, drawing people without them knowing, drinking wine, eating pasta, hungry for pasta, sad masturbation, solo honeymoon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:28:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24919849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdmondZippo/pseuds/EdmondZippo
Summary: Based on a Twitter Prompt by @someonesbh: "After Rey is jilted a week before her wedding, she decides to take her Paris honeymoon alone.Everyday, she sits wistfully under the Arch de Triomphe, unnoticed by everyone.Everyone except the artist who comes everyday to draw her."The story demanded I make some changes.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: April in Paris [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832020
Comments: 40
Kudos: 89





	1. Chestnuts in Blossom

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first AU, my first Twitter prompt. Very new to this. Written fic before, but this is new.  
> I did change the location, though, because the Arc de Triomphe didn't quite work. I hope it's good nonetheless.

**Ben**

April in Paris. Great song. Funny thing: it actually was April, and Ben actually lived in Paris. He liked to do on-the-nose-stuff like this with the music he listened to. He also liked to throw three coins in a fountain, and back when he still felt adequate enough to date someone, he’d ask the bartender to pour one for his baby and one more for the road. Too bad that bar had closed down. End of an era. So yeah, Ben was a jazz fan and a (literally, because he was very tall) giant dork. And also an artist. But, like, I’ll never say that I’m an artist. It’s not for me to say, you know? I like to draw. I fucking love it. It’s my whole life. But really, it’s not for me to say. Yes, I have money.

He went out of his _premier arrondissement_ apartment and sat at the terrace of the Café Blanc. His _espresso_ arrived two minutes later with a “Salut” from the morning waiter. He replied with a smile that sort of excused his still hard-to-understand-how-because-he’s-been-here-for-a-few-years-now clumsy French, moved the sugar away because black coffee is indeed better (thank you very much for the realization and the broken heart), and then just watched people pass for a minute or two. Just enough for the _café_ to cool down a bit. When he was done, he left a coin, as usual, and since his friend was busy inside, he waved, but wasn’t seen. How was it that such a tall man could sometimes be so invisible? That wasn’t a question that he ever asked himself. His friend just was busy. People were busy, sometimes.

Ben walked to the end of the street, took a right on rue Saint-Honoré, looked left at the Louvre, looked right at that French government place and then forward again. He passed _Le_ _Nemours_ , which even this rich kid found expensive, and saluted the _Comédie Française_ as he did almost every morning, because, this fucking building, man. No, I’ve never been inside. I’d like to, though. Someday. I’m more of a movie guy, so…

The sky disappeared for a moment as he walked under the _Galerie des Chartres_. On his right, the _Colonnes de Buren_ , which, depending on his mood, he either found “pretty cool”, “really, really inspired”, or “actual bullshit”. He was so used to his itinerary, his routine, that he didn’t notice the girl who sat alone on one of the columns. He may have glanced at her, but she didn’t register in his mind. She was nobody. But the _Jardin du Palais Royal_? Now, that was something. The leaves were making their awaited return on the trees. They were beginning to cover the alleys again, shadowing whatever was under them from the sometimes-punishing rays of the summer sun. Summer was still over two months away, but you never knew, with Paris. French people (yeah, yeah, not all of them) tended to be capricious, and so did the weather, as if it, too, bled _bleu, blanc, rouge_. As he walked, Ben’s mind went in its own direction. Pasta, some sauce, shit, gotta call mom, gotta talk about dad’s birthday gift when he doesn’t even want one, and if he does, he’ll just buy himself a new car and then sell it a few months later because, let’s be honest, kid, there ain’t no car for me but my Millenium and that’s all there is to it.

“Eh, l’amerloc!”, he heard from the side.

That was Gilles, a homeless man who just liked to sit on a bench, drink beer, and ask people for cigarettes. His friend Laurent, who was sitting beside him, held his head in his hands. Rough night, surely, as many of their nights were.

“Je ne fume plus, Gilles, je te l’ai déjà dit!” Ben replied. He had pronounced these words so frequently that one could still be amazed that his accent had not moved beyond the good-enough-for-you-not-to-die-because-you-can’t-speak-French-well-enough phase. Instead, he gave a bunch of coins to the two men and walked on. When he reached the end of the alley, he took a right and decided, because something inside felt like wanting to walk faster, to turn sooner in the _passage du perron_ on the walk back to the columns. He quickly reached the central fountain (in which he had thrown three coins way back when), resisted the urge to sit in one of the available chairs to idle, and sped on.

The girl was still sitting there. There were people around her now. During his walk in the _jardin_ , morning tourists had started to pour in to take pictures. He looked at her from the safety of the gallery’s shadow. Nice coat. Very British. Her hair was short and wet. Brushed back. She wore tight pants. Denim. Did you know that it means that it’s from Nîmes? Like, the city. Yeah. Denim, de Nîmes. Get it? I think it’s really cool. Oh, yeah, you can totally take that call. And not come back. That’s on me. What THE FUCK was I thinking? Jesus, Solo… He had heard his father’s voice in his head, that night, as clear as if the old man had been standing right next to him. It took three years for me to get your mother to kiss me, kid, and I have chops. You? Maybe nine or ten if you keep going like this. The girl wasn’t moving. She was just sitting there, legs crossed, looking down at the ground. There was a sort of sadness to her. A sadness he felt he could understand. He couldn’t explain it to himself, but something about this girl’s apparent melancholy felt very familiar. But what was it? He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He wished to know what it was. Right then, something inside him told him to walk away, and so he did.

As she looked up for the first time in maybe twenty minutes, her neck aching, all the girl saw was a tall, anonymous shadow walking away. She sat there for another hour.

**Rey**

“You utter, absolute, consummate, professional, Olympic performer of a bitch!” Rey spat before drinking another glass. Oh, wine, she thought. My only friend in this most desperate hour. Next thing she knew, she was crying. Again. Before her knees hit the floor (again), she got hold of the dresser and steadied herself long enough to reach the bed. She was careful not to drop the bottle because, well, expensive, but the glass wasn’t as lucky because, well, empty. Once again, it dawned on her that she was alone, and it was painful. Each time the realization came back, as waves do, it hit harder and harder, leaving her in an even worse state than before. She had felt so in charge, coming here. Yes, I’ll take the fancy train that goes under the sea on my own after being fucking jilted like… Her mind, rendered fuzzy by the expensive wine, proved itself incapable of providing a comparison that was apt enough. But the feeling remained. She had cried in her apartment, in the cab (“what’s going on, love?”), at the train station while checking the departures board, when the attendant had asked to see her passport and ticket, and when she had arrived in this too-big-for-one-sad-twat hotel room. The journey had gone well. It had been the first time that she had felt decent. In charge. It had felt tremendously good. And you know what? Rey Jeffries sounded like shit, anyway. Rey Jeffries. Rey Jeffries. Ew. She would be Rey Johnson, or she would be nobody. Either was fine, really. But preferably Johnson.

Rey Johnson picked up her glass, poured the remaining wine, stood up, because I still have my bloody dignity, don’t I, and drank. Fuck you, Mr. Jeffries. And fuck you, too, Mr. Rettio, Mr. He’s-my-best-friend-it’s-a-complicated-situation-I’m-not-sure-what-I-should-do-or-say-right-now. Fuck you. Fucking wankers. She went to the balcony and looked out at the shining city that spread before her. She wasn’t crying anymore, but the unfairness of what had happened to her hit her like a ton of bricks. She suddenly felt like she had to fight to stand up, and when the tears came again, she had surrendered. There had been no wedding. Tears, disappointment, tears, anger, but most of all, that feeling that she was sure she had escaped: loneliness. She had been abandoned. Again. She had made peace with the fact that she hadn’t been good enough for her parents to keep her. Her adoptive family had made sure that she was loved, but the feeling had never left her. Why would they have left, otherwise? She hadn’t been good enough.

“That’s bollocks, love, and you know it. I don’t want to you think that.”

Okay, fine, but why had _he_ left, too, then? Huh? The thought obliterated everything inside of her. _You’re just not good enough. Whatever you do._ No. Fuck off. She went back into the room and closed the door to the balcony. The night air had felt like a reprieve from the assault of bad thoughts. She needed more. She emptied the glass (again), put it down gently, picked up her coat, and got out of the room.

“Shit!”, Rey exclaimed. She had forgotten her phone. And her key card. And her passport. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!”, she continued. Coat pockets? Nothing. Trousers? Nothing on the side. Nothing in the back. Wait. Left side. She never put anything in that one, but there it was, her key card. She sighed with relief and went back into the room, this time triple checking that she had everything.

The spring air gently caressed her skin. She needed that. _Just watch, the wind is going to abandon you, too._ She laughed out loud. Her hotel was situated in a small street perpendicular to the _boulevard des italiens_ , which, according to her phone, led to the _Opéra Garnier_. Why not? The streets were practically empty. Cars passed her by, indifferent to her suffering. They just went on to their destination. Right now, Rey felt like she had none. And it did not feel good at all. When she reached the Opera, she stood in front of it and looked up. What a marvel, she thought. She looked at the four winged figures, which were closest to her, just two or three meters above the ground. Way up above, on each side, a bright, golden statue triumphed over the avenue that started behind her. When she brought her gaze back down, she looked at the people who were sitting on the stairs. Lonely people just like her. She could sit down with them. Blend in. Be one of those people who had so little to do at one in the morning that they just sat on the stairs of a majestic building in a foreign city that she was supposed to visit on her bloody honeymoon. No, thank you. She turned her back on them and started down the avenue. She chose to walk on the right side, because why not. _Because I’m right-handed and I’m in charge. And drunk. And so fucking sad._ She walked so slowly that it took her over ten minutes to walk down the avenue. When she looked back, she saw the Opéra confidently sitting at the top, right in the middle, immovable.

There was a fountain nearby, so she crossed toward it. There were more cars than before around her, now, and buses, too. She looked at her phone to see where she was. It showed her that she was at a crossroads between the _avenue de l’Opéra_ , which she had just left, and the _rue de Rivoli_. It also told her about the fountain she was standing by, and the fact that there was another. There it was. Both showed two circular pools upon which stood a high column that carried a feminine figure. She clicked on the link. It was a nymph. Cool. Nymphs were cool. _I bet nymphs don’t have to go through the kind of shit I went through_.

“Goodbye, nymphs”, she told them as she walked away. “Don’t trust…wankers. Drink wine instead.”

She crossed again and arrived on _Place Colette_. This time, her phone told her that she was standing in front of the _Comédie Française_. She opened the tab to read it later. She just wanted to look at it for a minute. These people really knew how to build. Anyway… She walked on, towards a café called _Le Nemours_. It was closed, but she could see people walking around inside, surely hurrying to close it down and go home. A big opening on the left intrigued her. She walked toward it. There were lights all around, but they dimmed as she got closer. Beyond the gate that kept her from going further, she saw circular slabs on the ground. Curious, she pulled her phone from her pocket again. _Les Colonnes de Buren_. Reviled by some, praised by others. _Yeah, art_. Rey pinpointed the location. She was attracted to it. She would come back during the day. Now was the time to sleep. If she could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want more, ask for it because I have commitment issues :)  
> I'm on Twitter @EdmondZippo


	2. Holiday Tables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey is sad and hungover. Ben wants to eat pasta and fall in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check these places out on Google Maps or something! They may inspire you to travel to Paris!

**Rey**

Rey woke up as she had for the past two weeks. First, she was happy to wake up. Over the years, she had tried to be grateful for every morning she was gifted. So, she was grateful. Then she became aware of her headache. At this point, headaches were the kind of acquaintance you were not surprised to have around you. Not enough water, Rey, not enough water. After that, the only point in which today differed from before: as her eyes opened, she wondered where she was. And then it hit her. Again. This was her honeymoon hotel room, except she was alone in her king bed, she stank of wine, her eyes were puffy from sleep _and_ tears, and she was alone. She tried not to move too much and kept her eyes closed, lest her headache added physical pain to what she already struggled with. She felt around for her phone but pushed it over the side of the bed by accident. The device fell to the ground. Rey groaned. _Ouch, my head_. She would have left it there for the next hour or so had it not started to vibrate. She forced herself to move and picked it up.

“Hey, dad…”

“Hello there!”

How are you? Are you ok? Do you need anything? She refrained from asking for the sweet release of death. I sort of always knew that he was a twat, honey. Sure, dad, sure you did. How’s Paris? Oh, great. Great wine, great food, great everything.

“It does smell of piss, though”, she added.

“Are you in any way surprised? We _are_ talking about the French, here.”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

They went on to talk for another couple of minutes. Rey couldn’t handle the concern in her father’s voice for much longer, so she put an end to the call. 7:37a.m. Finn had texted her a few red hearts around 3a.m. Lucky bastard, certainly partying with his hot boyfriend and their hot friends. But she would take the drunken show of love. It meant a lot.

When Rey just couldn’t deal with her state anymore, she proceeded to get out of bed. First, open your eyes and assume the position. Second, use your elbow to straighten yourself. Second and a half, wince, because this hangover is a bitch. As she sat in her bed, she felt the alcohol dance in her stomach and her head sort of exploded.

“Oh, fuck,” she whispered, so as not to make it worse. “Okay, okay, keep going. There you go!”

She was standing. She looked around the room for her glass. When she saw it, she almost gave up. But no. She had to go on.

“That’s actually a great metaphor for this shit moment in my life,” she said to no one in particular. She winced again as she walked toward the glass. “It hurts right now, but I have to go on, right?”

When she reached the bathroom, she was fully crying. Again. The road to recovery would be longer than a bedroom to bathroom journey. So be it. Let’s start this journey with three full glasses of French tap water. The next logical step was breakfast. And because she was in charge, she knew just where to have it.

_Le Nemours_ was fairly busy by the time Rey sat at one of its terrace tables. Someone she barely looked at because looking up was hard took her order and came back with it an absurd amount of time later. Or so it felt because her stomach was screaming for anything that wasn’t wine. The waiter delivered an _espresso_ , a glass of water, a croissant on a small plate with a napkin, and, most importantly, the check, which was French for kindly fuck off as soon as you’re done. Needless to say, she didn’t. It took her a while to eat the croissant, because she would have much preferred a big bowl of pasta to settle her stomach. The _café_ went down easily, and so did the water. When she asked for another, the waiter took the check away, which was French for I may start respecting you if you keep drinking ludicrously expensive coffee. She even got bottled tap water. Ah, money…When she ordered the third, she signalled that it would be her last, so when the waiter brought it to her, he was smiling, which was French for come back whenever you want. I like the way you spend. She had not returned the smile.

All the while, Rey had been watching the people going to and fro on _Place Colette_. Ordinarily, she would have been trying to give them identities, stories, full lives, but her brain and heart were not in the mood. She had watched as a ghost might watch the living: invisible, unimportant, inconsequential. Even the _Comédie Française_ wasn’t as interesting as it had been the night before. What hat retained its mystery, however, was the… what was it called again? She pulled out her phone to look it up. Ah, yes. Thank you, past me. When Rey looked at the check, her eyes grew big, but her mind shouted WHATEVER, I DON’T CARE, so she left the café and promised herself to find somewhere less expensive. Indeed, her mind had quickly added: never again, though.

The columns were now accessible. Rey ran a hand in her short, wet hair and walked on among the black and white cylinders. That was all they were: cylinders. Beyond _Les Deux Plateaux_ , which was this place’s actual name, some former king’s garden.

“Yeah, but you killed the king, so…”

She laughed to herself. Wow, she could still do that. That was good. She had always considered herself funny, even if other people didn’t. Some said her humour was too dark. And they were right.

When her legs grew too tired to support her, Rey sat on one of the columns. Bad idea. The weight of her situation took advantage of her pause to pin her down and feed her images, sounds, memories of that life of hers which had so brutally and unexpectedly ended. She could see him, with his curly, dark hair, his strange nose that she had grown to love, his glasses that made him look smarter than he actually was. She saw the shirt he was wearing when he asked her on their first date, with that hole he thought he had succeeded in concealing. She heard his voice when he had said you know, I’ve found this cool little place, you’re really going to like it, and when she had asked about it, like, tell me what it is, you know I hate it when you do that, all he’d said was it’s pretty fun, with that dumb but cute smile of his, and when they’d arrived there, it did look fun, but what was even more fun was that he had asked will you marry me, Rey Johnson, and that, understandably, had been the very best day of her life.

That very best day had been followed by months upon months of planning and bickering about this and that and I’m not actually good at any of that, which she had sort of seen coming through the years, but you know, love. In the end, she had taken it upon herself to make her wedding day grandiose as fuck and inexpensive at the same time. She had used her friend Finn’s _gay sense of what is cool_ , which he had repeatedly told her wasn’t a thing and had never been a thing.

“Poe’s cool,” she had countered.

“Yeah, but…,” he had begun before stopping to think. “You’re right, I _do_ know what is cool…”

He had walked away, then, and from the loo had said: “But it’s because I’m cool, not because I’m gay!”

Rey had also enlisted the help of her friends, Kaydel and Rose. They had closed their shop (“I’m telling you, it’s a great time to take a break”), flown across the bloody ocean, and had taken residence in Rey’s apartment. It had been unbelievably fortunate that the flat (which belonged to her parents and had been rented for as long as she had been living with her former fiancé) hadn’t been occupied when her friends arrived, for obvious monetary reasons, but even more so when her life had been crushed to smithereens by this cowardly excuse of a man. She had had something to fall back on. Something to return to. Something to rely on. Yet she couldn’t stay there for too long, because memories and the unavoidable sensation of failure and regression. Plus, the trip.

“Fuck you, Mr. Jeffries”, she muttered.

_Why did you have to ruin it all? I would have happily settled for… whatever. Maybe have cheated somewhere down the line._

Her neck was aching. She uncrossed her legs and looked up. People were now walking and taking pictures all around her. She blinked, shivered, and pulled her coat closer to her. That was when she saw it. Or think that she did. Twenty meters of so in front of her, vanishing in the shadows. A tall, dark silhouette. She stared at the last place where its feet had hit the ground before disappearing. But why? Why stare? It could have been anybody.

**Ben**

There definitely was something about her, but like maybe one girl a day, she looked gorgeous beyond words, deserved everything she ever wanted, and of course he would give her everything because look at you, you magnificent jewel of a person. _Unless she’s not a jewel inside. You ever think about that, pal? Also, don’t forget that you are inadequate and therefore cannot be in any romantic relationship ever. It’s what you believe, remember?_ Ah, that guy. Of course. Ben tried to push him away, with moderate success. There was something different about this girl that he would never see again.

This big idiot named Ben Solo had forgotten to take his drawing material with him, this morning. This never happened. Having his material when he left his place was as natural and automatic as taking a breath. In, get your sketchbook, out. In, your pencils, out. Everyday, without fail. Except for today. Big fail. So, like the big idiot that he was, he started to walk home to get his stuff, but then quickly changed his mind and went the opposite way. Right. Pasta, some sauce, call mom. Hi, mom, I’m in love. No, I haven’t spoken to her, but you know, she’s the one. Yes, mom.

“Who is this?”

“Hey, mom, it’s me.”

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked in this particular day’s weird voice. Why did she always do that? It had stopped being funny so long ago. “My son calls me at least once a week, so I’m asking again: Who? The fuck? Are? You?”

“Mom, I’m sorry– “

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she interrupted him playfully while maintaining this unbearable tone. “What do you want?”

“Do you want to talk about dad’s gift?”

“Ben, your dad and I are getting a divorce.”

He stopped dead in his tracks because that sentence was the least sensical sentence in the whole wide world. What?

“What?”

“I’m kidding. But he…”

Ben pulled the phone from his ear and let out a lengthy string of curses under his breath. This mother of his!

“…and his feet stink when he takes his shoes off! I can’t take it anymore! I don’t know, Ben, this might not be a joke after all. My nose hurts, the house smells weird all the time, and even Chewie runs away from him when he comes home. You hear me? Running! At his age! I may divorce him. Or get him new shoes. Yeah, shoes are less expensive. And socks. You know, the other day, I found a pair I gave him for Christmas when you were five. How old are you now?”

“Mom, can you not, with the crazy shit?” Ben asked, his heart racing.

“Hey, language! Learn to take a joke, okay? You little shit…”

He had to laugh. This mother of his!

“Don’t bother with the gift ideas, okay? I’ll get him socks and shoes and throw out everything else. And if he doesn’t like it, he’ll go work on his feet-smelling car barefoot. May he walk on a nail.”

When the joke had run its course, she asked him how he was. He refrained from saying that he had seen the most beautiful girl in the world.

“I’m going to buy some pasta,” was all he could say. This was the state of his mind at this particular moment: pasta and a girl.

There was a pause. Pasta? Yes, mom. Another pause.

“Are you by chance aware of these wonderful things our dear Earth provides called vegetables?”

Here we go again, he thought. He should have talked about the girl after all. Or maybe not. It could have been worse. She would have gone on again about how his sole purpose in life was to provide her with a granddaughter to whom she would leave all her dresses and shoes and this and that. Plus, a French girl? French is inherently hot when properly spoken, Ben. Make. Me. A. French. Granddaughter.

“Are you telling me that because of you and your father-given lack of taste, I’m financing the pasta industry? Don’t do this to me, Ben.” She sounded really sad, then. What an actress. He couldn’t stop a smile from appearing on his lips. Ben apologized to his mother, she said that it was okay, he was forgiven, oh, my darling boy will start eating good food again! When he came out of the store over half an hour later, he was carrying tomatoes, zucchini, and pasta. Shit! Forgot the sauce.

He woke up from his too-big-a-plate induced nap to a voice message from his gallerist friend.

“Ben. Ben. Ben Solo. You _have_ to give me something. I’m coming to see you tonight, okay? Eight o’clock. Nine. Nine thirty. Okay? This is Hux. Do you like it? When I say Hux, does it sound good? Tell me tonight, okay? Alright. This is Hux. I don’t know, I kinda like it…”

It was half past five, which gave him some time to go out, buy some beer, take a shower, maybe eat something. He drank whatever, but Hux, as he had decided to call himself, only drank IPA. But you don’t drink anything else? Any other beer? No. What if there’s no IPA? Then I just leave. Really? Yeah, really. Wow. Yeah.

He went back to the store he had gone too earlier to buy his pasta. If someone had asked him right then why he went so far instead of going to the smaller one that was only one or two streets behind his own, he would have been unable to give a sensible reason. At first, he thought that it was because this was the only place where he could buy IPA. Then he remembered that his usual, much closer store sold IPA, too. On his way back, as he walked across _Place Colette_ and was about to put _Le Nemours_ behind him, he slowed down and looked left. His body quickly followed. The black and white columns were almost deserted. The tourists who were currently taking pictures would not have the best light. He walked among them, finally admitting to himself why he had taken such a detour. There was something about this girl that he would never see again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to need to take a small break to think more carefully about the story and also do things. I'll be back next week! And, yeah, if you want more, let it be known, because I can just as well leave it on hiatus. Just ask my Episode IX rewrite...


	3. Under the Trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux is in this one and he provides Ben with something that was truly needed. Rey does things she wants to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was the wait worth it? Is it still good? Let's see.

**Ben**

Tim “Hux” Armitage was slowly pacing in front of him, a beer bottle in hand. His winter beard had stayed on after spring had begun, which somehow made him look way nicer and more approachable than without.

“Please don’t mind the beard, I’ll shave it soon enough.”

“I actually kinda like it,” Ben offered.

Hux stopped pacing. Did it work with this new vibe he was trying? Ben thought so. His friend told him he’d get a second opinion. No offense. None taken. So, what was the new thing?

“New exhibition,” Hux began, his mind suddenly focused, his body reflecting it. “The gallery needs to live a little more. So.” He took a few steps towards Ben, who was sitting on his couch. “I’m thinking about doing a thing on eyes.”

Eyes? Yeah, man. Eyes. Window to the soul and all that.

“But through different media, right? I want everything. Pencil, paint, photography, whatever. I want you on pencil, obviously…” Hux designated the many projects, most of them unfinished, that surrounded them. He then brought his attention back to Ben and pointed to him. “But I’m going to need you to focus, on this one. You need to deliver. Because if you sell, that’ll be money you don’t take from your parents. The gallery needs you to deliver. Because fame, obviously. And _I_ need you to deliver.”

His eyes had an unusual glint to them. There was no ‘because’ for him. He went on to talk about the details: it would take place three to four months from now. He already had most of the work he wanted to display. Ben’s contribution was, in truth, the last piece of the exhibition. The _clé de voûte_. All of the other work was really good, impressive, bla bla bla, but you… Come on, man, sketchbook time is over, you need to get back to it! Okay? Eyes! Beautiful eyes! With colour, if possible. At least one of them. Please? Sad boy time is over! There it was again. The thing in Hux’s eyes. How sad was _he_?

“Tim, man…,” Ben said to steady his friend. “Wait a minute. Are you okay?”

“What? Yeah, yeah. No, I’m great. I’m full of… creative… business… whatever energy. I want to do things, man! Things! Exhibitions! A ton of exhibitions.”

Ben sensed the lie, but he didn’t insist. If it were to come out, it would do so on its own time. The next couple of hours saw them drink and trade stories of what had happened to them since they had last seen each other. They used to meet regularly, back when Ben was prolific. The last time he’d seen Hux was on New Year’s Eve. The memory of his drunk friend trying to twerk brought a smile to his lips.

“My dad died,” Hux suddenly said.

Ben was instantly brought back to the moment. He turned to look at his friend. There was more than a glint in his eyes, now. Alcohol was to blame, yes, but so were the tears that had started welling up.

“Ah, fuck,” he laughed as he tried to get rid of them. “Why am I even crying for this bastard? My dad. Bloody joke…”

Now in his mid-thirties, Hux had been estranged from his father for over ten years. From what Ben knew, because his friend would very rarely talk about his father, the man had been an emotionally abusive drunk for a long time, had dragged is own son into a minor drug addiction when alcohol had proven to be too expensive a hobby, and then had been revealed to be an even worse man that Hux had ever thought. What he had now, he owed it to himself and himself only.

“He’s left me…,” he continued between sniffs, “so much freaking money!” He laughed bitterly. “As if it meant or did anything. I don’t want it. I don’t want anything from him, of him. Nothing. So, I gave it away. And that, my friend,” he exclaimed as he recovered from his emotional display, “is why I need you to draw. Let me be drunkenly honest for a moment and illustrate said drunkenness with a good old burp.”

That was a quality burp if Ben had ever witnessed one.

“You need to be inspired again. You’re too good to be wasting away like this. That girl, whatever her name was…”

“Voe,” Ben said with a painful thought. _On Ben Solo’s Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Forever Loneliness, Book I_ , said the voice in his head with a mocking tone. Voe’s name needed very little to spring up in his mind. It had done so quite often in the first year after their breakup, mostly unprovoked, of course. As time had gone on, it had receded in his mind while forever remaining ready to let itself be brought back up again.

“Yeah, her,” Hux replied. “I’m not going to tell you to move on. I would hate for someone to tell me to move on from my shit. Just… move _forward_ with it, man. It’s part of you, so make something out of it. It’s you and me, Ben. You make good shit, I make money. Ethical money.”

Ben raised an eyebrow. “Ethical money? What does that mean?”

Hux just shrugged. “I don’t know. Blame the beer.”

He never had to when it came to his own state. When Ben woke up the next morning, he was _frais comme un gardon_ (a small fish), thanks to his planning nature. The full bottle of water he had gone through had done its job. He had gotten that weird expression from a younger girl he had had sex with in the starting-to-become-distant past, when Voe’s face had started to become a fuzzy memory. As his mother had told him: French was hot when properly spoken.

Hux’s words had made Ben think about his own relationship with his parents, and especially with his father. While Han Solo was far from being anything like Hux’s father, Ben had always felt like there was a distance, an immovable object between him and his father that had kept them from bonding for the longest time. Only his coming of age and growing interest in “adult things” his father could relate to had allowed them to connect. Cars, women, shady dealings not to be admired nor reproduced: these were the things that Han had felt comfortable sharing with his son. Ben had never had any interest in cars, except for the Millenium, an old and dirty looking thing that exuded his father’s energy even when he wasn’t there. He cared so much for the old girl, as he liked to call her, that Ben only felt closest to him when he, too, cared for the old girl.

“I once picked up a girl called Liana,” his father had once told him with eyes bathed in nostalgy. “Liana Hallik, her name was. British brunette who looked like she was running away from something. Terrified. But pretty. I must have been, what… twenty-three, twenty-four? Let me tell you, kid: that was all because of the Millenium. Don’t tell you mother, though, huh? This is between you and me, okay?”

Ben had nodded.

“Few years later, this other girl. Beautiful skin. Sana. Came from a rich family. Wild nature. Big idea of who she was, and she never let nobody tell her anything different. She spent the whole night talking shit about my car, but you know what?”

He had paused on purpose, expecting Ben to say what he was waiting for.

“The Millenium–”

“The Millenium effect, yes sir!” Han had exclaimed as he hit the dashboard. “That’s your legacy right there, kid. It’s the part of me that only belongs to me, you see. Just me. And one day, it’ll belong to you. Your mother, she’s got her parents, her brother… that’s plenty of legacy for you to claim.”

Han had paused again, suddenly searching for the right words to say, his eyes looking for them as if they were hiding from him.

“All I have to give you is this,” he’d said while trying to fight the obvious emotion he had been feeling. “A car. And a name I gave myself. No country house, no big, recognizable name. Just a car and a name you already carry.”

Ben’s jaw had started to act up. His eyes had decided to blink on their own to fight off the incoming tears. This had been a moment so rare that he had stored it in the crystal palace of his mind. The day his father had laid some of his armour down. The day Han Solo had just been Dad.

He was still thinking about that day when he arrived at the _Colonnes._ Of its own accord, his head turned to the right, which led to his heart and possibly every other organ he had in his body dropping right down to his shoes. She was wearing the same coat, but different pants. Her hair was dry. She held a book in her left hand, and a cigarette in her right. She had returned, and this time, Ben was carrying his drawing material.

**Rey**

There was a bookshop on _rue de Rivoli_ that sold books in English as well as in French. Rey moved around the warm atmosphere of English section for the longest time before settling on a novel by an American author she had never heard of before. After cashing out, she went down the street with the intention of walking in the dead king’s _jardin_. Not the king that the French had decapitated, but a dead king, nonetheless. Hers was still very much alive, thank you very much. On the way there, she passed a few people on a cigarette break. The awful smell called to her, digging in her memory for the time she used to be one of them and the reason she stopped. That reason wasn’t part of her life anymore, so a sonorous _why the hell not_ resonated in her mind.

Upon her return to _place Colette_ , she walked in front of a window that called to her. There were elegant lighters, pipes, boxes of cigars and other gentlemanly instruments of smoking. The shop claimed to be over three hundred years old. _Got to respect that_ , Rey thought. She went in. When she came out, she was a smoker again, and it pleased her quite a bit. She smoked with delight, visibly smiling, and did all sorts of funny tricks she used to do before “I’m not a big fan of cigarettes”. She blew smoke through her nose, made little smoke circles, did that thing when you inhale what’s coming out of your mouth, which sort of makes you look like a dragon. Very much unlike her, though, her lungs were quite displeased and upset. She quickly became light-headed and had to sit on a bench to finish her cigarette. In front of her, the _Comédie Française_ was bathed in sunlight. When she was done, she started to walk towards her destination, but her breath needed to be taken care of. She popped back into the shop for some chewing-gums. _Right. Let’s absorb some Parisian beauty_.

Beyond the _Colonnes_ and beyond another weird, modern, type of sculpture that featured two circles of shiny metal balls resting upon what looked like two shiny metal plates, lay the _jardin du Palais-Royal_. Rather than keep to the shadows, Rey decided to walk in the sun. The outside warmth it brought her seemed to cloak her from the cold of her loneliness. It comforted her. She felt like she had at least one ally in this sea of strangers. It was far from enough to keep her afloat, but it helped, considering the fact that every waking moment (and some of her sleeping ones, as well), was a fight against the part of her that just wanted to stop resisting the tide and let herself drown in a sea of her darkest impulses. And wine. _It’s a big, emphatic ‘no’ on that one. Has to be. Except for the wine. I do like the wine_. On her left, a long row of arcades followed the sunbathed alley. Cafés were opening, two homeless men were resting, and a few people were walking, an elder couple among them. Once again, the architecture called her eyes to it and kept her head up for the length of the alley. At the end, she positioned herself in the middle of the _jardin_ and looked back toward the entrance. There was a symmetry to this garden. From where she stood, she saw a long, rectangle spread of glass that replicated itself on the other side of a fountain that stood at the exact centre of it all. The tree covered alley was sandwiched between two sunny ones, and the arcade followed on the other side. She lit another cigarette as she started to walk back to the entrance. _I could get used to this_.

Thanks to her copious hotel breakfast, she was far from being hungry. Plus, it was barely ten o’clock. She could relish in what she saw around her for a while before being preoccupied with food. There had been no pasta, the day before. Only a burger that had been brought up to her room after an I-need-this-or-I’ll-die nap. She made a mental note to look for a good Italian restaurant.

Rey sat on the exact same column as the day before. She opened her book and started to read. Because of thoughts of Mr. Jeffries and the myriad disappointments he had caused her through the years swirling in her head, she read the first page three times before understanding what it was saying.

“I’m not a big fan of cigarettes,” he said again in her mind. Which was exactly what she needed to hear.

“Piss off, then,” she replied aloud as she lit a third one. He did.

And then she got into the book. Thirty pages quickly went by, as did cigarettes. She had trouble getting over the fact that smoking felt as good as it did for something that killed so many all over the world. Still conscious of the fact that her breath was terrible because of it, she punctuated every couple of death sticks, as her father liked to call them, with gum that she then put in a tissue. As it did the day before, her neck started to hurt, but for a much better reason. When she raised her head and looked around, her eyes fell upon a man. He, too, was sitting on a column, but it didn’t look high enough for him, because his limbs appeared to be a tangled mess he didn’t quite know how to work with. He held a pencil in his hand, and the pencil was running across a sketchbook. Rey looked at the man, at his long hair, his big hands, and his eyes that had just gone from the paper to her face. As soon as they came, however, they ran away to look at something behind her that seemed so incredibly interesting that she felt obligated to turn back to see what it was. It was the building that surrounded the columns. _Oh. He must like that architecture, too. Who can blame him?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, but seriously, is it still good?


	4. This is a Feeling...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are happening?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next one are (forgive me, I know it's a bad word now) twin chapters. In the sense that they deal with the same thing for both characters in obviously different ways.

**Ben**

_Well, we had a good run_ , the voice in his head said as it mockingly contemplated the panic that had just set in Ben’s mind. _Pack up your shit, burn your place, leave the country._ Locking eyes with the sad-looking girl had shaken him to his very core. _You clumsy fuck, how did you ever hope to remain invisible? You’re huge._ Pretending to be looking at the building behind her was the only logical course of action. Otherwise, she would totally know that he had been drawing her for the past half hour, which would cause her to run toward him with a furious look on her face and call him the most horrible names, like pervert, creep, weirdo, before storming off out of his life forever, which he totally deserved because, honestly, like, what the fuck. To be even more convincing, he actually started to draw the portion of the building he was looking at right below the portrait. Now, all he could do was hope that his deception was efficient enough. He had to commit to it. Actually running away would be the exact same thing as loudly admitting, in front of all the people that sat here and there and took pictures of themselves, that he, indeed, was a creep who liked to draw sad-looking girls. _This is too funny_. No, this is not. This is an absolute disaster. Plus, she looks like she’s sitting on top of a window. The girl’s portrait included as much detail as he had allowed himself to give it, which was a lot. And the building that was supposed to exonerate him only consisted of… well, barely anything more than lines.

For the next ten minutes, Ben focused like never before on these most fascinating windows. _Glass, amirite?_ Shut up. _Glass squares. Who even cares about anything else? See how there are these white lines that keep the glass squares together? See how that makes windows? Have you seen the windows, Ben?_ The voice was getting to him. It was as far from being the first time as it was from being the last. As far as he knew, it had always been there. Second-guessing, mocking, berating, insulting, prophesising, condemning as it was doing now. There was no escaping it. So, just focus on the building.

**Rey**

_Wow, he really is into buildings_ , Rey thought as she watched the man furiously draw windows and stone in his sketchbook. The word furiously came to mind so easily because he was literally frowning as he looked up. Committing the details of the façade must have been of the utmost importance, for he almost looked as if he was mad about something.

“Come on, you bloody building,” she imagined him thinking with the thickest French accent she was capable of conceiving in her own mind, “let me draw you. Let me pierce your secrets and drink at the fountain of your history.”

Once again, she found herself really funny and smiled to herself.

**Ben**

She’s smiling. What is she smiling about? What does anything mean right now? Nope, nope, back to the windows. Little more shade over here. Yes, that’ll do nicely. I don’t care about this stupid building. Please let me disappear into the floor. His whole body was a furnace of shame he would give anything to be rescued from. I’ve been made, I need an extraction. _Roger that, Solo, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to go fuck yourself on this one._ What the hell do I do? Suddenly, as if it knew the answer he needed, his pencil fell to the ground. Oh, God. Why?

**Rey**

She went back into the book, but a light noise made her look up again. The man was awkwardly running after his pencil, his face unmistakably red by now.

“I dub thee Awkward-Man,” she laughed under her breath.

The sketchbook followed his comrade at the bottom of the column but stayed there, contrary to the pencil, which was still making his owner run. He had hit it with his shoe.

“Ah, and a Grand Master of the Order of Awkward, you are!” she continued for herself.

When at last he had caught up with the offender and picked him back up, he sat back on his column and put the sketchbook on his joined thighs. Before starting to sketch again, however, he ran a hand in his long hair. It was Rey’s turn to feel something. There had just been a flash of _hot_ in this sea of general awkwardness.

**Ben**

There was no choice. Retreat was the only option. For a final, painful minute, he pretended to put the final touches to his work. He then looked back up at the windows while being careful not to look at the girl. Yes, that’s it. Now, back at the drawing. We’re satisfied with what we’ve accomplished today, aren’t we? One last look, one little nod to an unfeeling structure as if to say yes, we’re quite satisfied, and he was ready to pack his things and go. Defeated only in his own mind, Ben Solo got up and walked away.

**Rey**

Rey was sad to see him go. As sad as one can be after having laughed at someone, of course. When he turned and disappeared in the shadows that led back to _place Colette_ , she felt a cold pass through her. She shivered and pulled her coat closer to her. Surely it was her stomach telling her that it was time to think about it. She looked forward in the book to see where the next chapter was ending. It was a bit too far for her taste, so she stopped at the end of the paragraph she was currently reading and got up to leave.

The time for pasta had come. Her phone showed her multiple Italian restaurants around her, and they were all four out of five, but one had managed to distinguish itself. After investigating it, she found that it was located on the other side of the Seine, in the sitxth _arrondissement_. Only, Parisian streets were much more difficult to navigate than those she was used to, whether in London or all the places she’d been in the U.S. No grid here, no sir. She looked back to her phone and the compass of her app. Where was west? Ok, that way. She had a thought for her friends, Kaydel and Rose, but especially for the latter, whom she knew had troubles of the heart. _Hello there,_ Rey typed on her keyboard, _going to eat some comfort pasta._ She looked at the time. Yeah, she’s still asleep. _Want to see your face! Tell me when you can talk!_ She pressed send, took another look at the map, and started walking. Since the itinerary was too French for her, she decided to proceed in a more Anglo-Saxon manner. Straight lines and corners. She started left on _rue Saint-Honoré_ for a few minutes to the corner of _rue du Pont-Neuf_. The corner before that one showed a pasta shop that seriously made her reconsider her commitment to her walk. It did smell good. And the people inside did sort of look Italian. But the whole place also looked too fast-foody. Too small, too just-eat-and-get-out-if-there-even-is-a-seat-for-you. It just wasn’t the my-life-has-become-shit restaurant experience she was looking for. She wanted a lonely table next to the window. She wanted to be served by a moustachioed man who would intuitively know her pain and say something like:

“A glass of wine for the _signorina_. On the house.”

Rey wanted to drink that wine and gaze out the window while her food grew cold. She wanted to reflect upon her life and wonder if she should start over here, where she knew absolutely no one but the hotel desk clerk and uh… yeah, that was it. No one. _Let’s not cry before we arrive at the restaurant_. It fit her tableau well enough to cry at the restaurant. Maybe she’d get a glass out of it. _Oh, Rey, how funny you are. Why, thank you, Rey, I find you quite funny, too! Why, thank you!_

There was a café on _rue du Pont-Neuf_ the tables of which were being dressed for lunch by a tall, bald man. He gave her a look she quite disliked before going back inside. That’d be a place she’d never come to. She walked on and found herself crossing _rue de Rivoli_.

“Well, you’re a long street, aren’t you?” she said to the concrete and the buildings flanking it. _Commenting on the length of streets… How the mighty have fallen…_ There was loud roadworks ahead. She looked up. They were working on a tall and large building called… she looked at her phone… _La Samaritaine_. Old department store, been closed for a while, due to reopen soon. Intrigued by the possibilities in terms of interior design, she looked for the date. Too far in the future. She couldn’t yet know what kind of feelings she’d have towards Paris. Drinking, eating, smoking, reading: all of that was fun enough right now to drown her sorrow, but would she ever come back to the city? She had no idea. _So, let’s not make any promises, alright?_ The last one had left a bitter taste in her mouth that would last a long time, she knew.

Rey arrived at the bridge. The _Pont-Neuf_. The mood that had just fallen upon her prevented her from looking it up to learn about it. _Okay, but this view…_ She looked left and right. Each side offered her a gorgeous view. Up in the sky, the April sun lit the river and made the whole city feel alive and warm. A tourist boat went by under her, and she saw people drinking at tables. Waiters were coming and going between them, certainly to take orders. Wealthy tourists. _Wow. Why did we not think of this, Jeffries? Wanker._ As funny as it was, this was a bitter thought. What could have been. How does one even get back up? The mere thought of his name brought so many memories to light that she sometimes wished that they could be taken from her. _Let there be a dark hole where you used to be._ Rey laughed bitterly. It was part of her. Forever. Another deep scar that only time could heal if it so desired. She was surprised to discover that she had stopped walking. She resumed her journey to the fabled restaurant and its moustachioed waiter.

Her phone proved quite useful once she fell in the maze of the old quarter that she found herself in after the bridge. Her stomach was fully awake and expecting to be fed by now. When she arrived at the restaurant and went in, however, her expectations were largely unfulfilled: she wasn’t given a seat by the window, and although the waiter had a moustache, it wasn’t as taken care of as she would have wanted. Plus, there was no glass of wine for the _signorina_ that she didn’t pay for. The pasta, though… _Oh, Lord._ They were good. No lie there. Rey even made noises. Upon delivering her plate to her, someone else came and proposed to grate some parmesan over her plate. _So close to the ultimate cliché experience!_ All in all, it was a good meal, and it made her content. The pasta had been eaten. _At last._ The nap would be delightful, she knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter five is starting to flirt with 'Explicit' territory... But don't hope for actual smut, okay? OKAY?


	5. ... That No One Can Ever Reprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey both need someone to talk to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the other twin chapter! I'm doing things that, uh... Well, I hope they work!

**Rey**

_Well, this is a surprise_ , Rey thought when she woke up and became aware of herself. The nap had indeed been delightful. A special kind of delightful. A soaked-panties kind of delightful. She had fallen asleep content, full of something that she had desired. She was now waking up craving something else. She laughed out loud and brought her arms over her eyes. The smile did not fade for a good, long minute. It had been _so_ good. _Who was I thinking about?_ Out of all the men she knew and had known, few came up as possibilities. Out of those few, none seemed to elicit the emotions that had left a powerful imprint on her and her undergarments. None brought her back to what must have been a torrid dream. _No, but seriously. Who?_ Her brain refused to give her an answer. _As you wish, bitch._ She hardly needed anyone to make herself feel good and illustrated that fact by giving herself a thunderous orgasm. She was quite loud.

After washing her hands, she picked up her phone. Rose had replied. _OMG ME TOO!!!_ , the first message said. It showed a picture of a nice, homemade bowl that made another part of Rey’s anatomy water. _I’m not at work today, so call me whenever. I’m binging this new show about these two guys that literally everyone hates, and it’s GREAT!_ Great. Rey drew herself a bath and hoped that the Wi-Fi, which had been quite shit so far, would work well enough in the bathroom. Rose picked up almost immediately.

“Bath-Woman, I like it!” she said as a greeting. “Treat yo’ self!”

“Heh, you!” Rey replied. How happy she was to see a friendly face! It almost brought tears to her eyes. Rose’s face was always open, smiling, bright, and it was always a comfort to talk to her. “How are you?”

“Well, I kinda want to die,” she laughed. “You?”

“Me too, but I sort of have to keep going. Who talks first? You? Me?”

“I know all about yours, so I’ll go,” Rose declared as she made a beer appear out of nowhere.

“Since when do you drink IPA?” Rey asked.

Rose lifted a finger and swallowed with an expression of pure bliss.

“Since I’ve become a bougie New-Yorker.”

“You’ve been in New-York for years.”

“Yeah, I know, but you know.”

“No, I don’t,” Rey said.

“Doesn’t matter,” she laughed again. “Okay, where do I start? Where. Do. I. Start. Um, I don’t really know what to do, regarding Kaydel. Like, after what happened at your place, she, uh… I don’t know, it’s like something’s broken. And she’s so weird, I mean, _so weird_! And she’s got a boyfriend now? Whom she barely knows? And somehow I said whom?”

“Yeah, you did just say whom,” Rey smiled with her thumb between her teeth. “Give me a second, I need a drink for this.” She deactivated the camera and got out of the bathtub.

“No, please, let me see your boobs, I want to see some boobs!” Rose pleaded. Rey laughed and went in search of alcohol. _Oh my God, thank you, past me_ , she thought as she found a bottle.

“Okay, I’m back. Go”

It was a good thing that they weren’t living together. It was the best thing. The shop was enough. And it was actually starting to become too much. Kaydel had become distant. Their friendship was in shambles.

“It’s like she’s ashamed, or something. She won’t talk to me. When people come in, she’s all like, ‘it’s okay, I got it’, just to walk away from me. It’s the worst.”

It did sound uncomfortable. But there wasn’t a lot she could do to help Rose. Kaydel just wasn’t gay. Rose was running after someone that didn’t exist. Better to let go. She told her friend so. Her replied started with a low burp.

“Sorry. Yeah, I know, but it’s no reason to treat me like shit. And I fucking hate this. I have more choices than all of you! I can have sex with whoever, but I have to be mad about the poster straight girl. This just sucks!”

“Wank,” Rey proposed with a shrug, inspired by her own temporary remedy to heartbreak.

“Wink?”

“No,” she laughed. “WANK! Beat the old meat, dial the phone, jill off, flick that pretty little bean!”

“What a great idea I had never thought about before this very moment!” Rose exclaimed sarcastically. “It’s all I fucking do! And watch TV!”

“Well, then…”

“Yup.”

“I’m sorry your life is shit, Rose.”

“I’m sorry your life is, too.”

They went on for another half-hour. After a lazy evening, Rey went to bed. As she fell asleep, the image she’d been searching for all day popped into her head. It jerked her awake. She could not believe it. _Him?_

**Ben**

From the moment he left the columns to the moment he closed his door behind him, Ben Solo felt a mix of shame and excitement. His behaviour had not been exemplary, sure. And yet… their eyes had met. _It doesn’t mean shit_. Yeah, I know, but nothing ever means anything, so let me have this. _Whatever, dude. Do what you always do. Imagine everything, try something, get nothing. I know you._ No, you don’t. _I am you_. No, you’re not. Leave me alone. Go away! And he went away. This… part of him whose name he’d known all his life but, just like Voe’s, never uttered for fear of bringing it to the forefront of his mind. He knew that the voice was right. No, he’s not. Come on, man, look at us. Of course, he is. No, he’s not. What do you even know about anything? I know that he’s wrong. Whatever.

Although Ben was quite hungry by that time, he went to bed on an almost empty stomach. Just coffee and whatever he’d eaten in the morning. The voice told him to. He wasn’t truly tired, of course. Not physically. Nowhere but in his head was he exhausted. Thirty minutes after getting into bed, he still felt wide awake. _Well, you know what to do_. Yes, he did. Ben reached down into his trunks. What did she look like? Come on, you have good eyes, a good memory. Yes, there she is. Beautiful. Delicate. But so sad. Oh, come on. He was only beginning to get hard, and he was already deflating. He tried and tried again, but the sad-looking girl remained sad in his mind. Oh, well. Only one way to get there. He conjured _her_ in his mind. The way she used to kiss him, touch him, go down his neck, his torso, only to find him ready for her, and then take him in her mouth. _Pitiful_ , the voice said. _Relying on these old memories to get off._ Had he not been focused on his current task; Ben would have laughed. It’s all I have. And it’s all _you_ will ever have. _I don’t care. The only thing I need is your pain._ When Ben came, there was more than he’d been anticipating. I guess it’s been longer than I thought. He got up to wash himself, and did so, all the while refusing to look at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. The deafening silence he found upon returning underneath his sheets was hard to tune out, as were the thoughts that fell upon him, but in the end, he managed to fall asleep for a couple of hours.

Although Ben was grateful for the sleep he got, saying that he felt better when he woke up would be a lie. Something was weighing heavily on him. He didn’t think twice about masturbating again. It was no remedy, though. Just a temporary fix to an ongoing situation. When he came for the second time, he felt nothing positive. Yes, it felt good on the moment, but that was it. Just that tiny, little moment. Going forward, there was only the voice. In his mind’s eye, he saw him, sitting on a chair, looking at him with disgust. He sought to avoid him, but it was impossible.

“How…?” Kylo Ren began, then stopped. “I don’t understand you, at times. You keep hoping, hoping, hoping, that things will change. But they won’t. This girl, that girl, whomever. No.” He laughed. “It’s not going to happen.” He got closer to Ben, looked at him right in his eyes. “Nothing is going to happen to you. No good thing, no bad thing. Just… nothing. I got you, man. _I got you_.”

Ben got up to throw the dirty tissue he’d found under his pillow out. He then put on some music to try and sing along to in the shower. Wake up, man. Wake up! Food. Go. Get. Food. When he was done, he looked at the time. Half past two. That could work. He called for a pizza.

“Oui, je vais venir la chercher,” he said as best he could. He barely wanted to speak, so speaking French? A chore. Good thing the owner of the restaurant knew him, anyway. Ten minutes? No problem.

What a sight he must have been. A tall, gaunt, pale figure walking quickly on _rue de Richelieu_ , with his long arms and long legs. His face was a wax mask against his dark clothes. He still managed a smile for the man who shook his hand and gave him his pizza, though. He could do that, at least. The food changed everything. Back at his place, he barely let it last ten minutes. It was beyond needed. The voice of Kylo Ren had receded. You can’t let yourself go like that, man. Yes, he knew. He knew. The voice isn’t everything. The voice lies. Who knew what could happen? Anything could happen. Anything. Ben spent the rest of the day watching TV. There was a new show that everyone on social media was talking about.

The next morning, Ben made sure to eat a full breakfast. On the way to the _jardin_ for his daily walk, he thought about Hux’s new project. Whose eyes could he draw? Who did he know? Among the people he knew, who? The surprisingly good weather made him take his jacket off. Paris was in a good mood. I think I might be, too. This project would get him back on track. Get him out of his creative desert. The hiatus had gone on for too long. I’ll find someone. Oh, shit. She’s here. Okay, don’t look. Walk on, walk around the parc, and then go elsewhere. He walked on, walked around the parc, but when it came to going elsewhere, something inside him refused and made him sit on a column. What are we doing? I don’t know, man, but we’re doing it! Are we being weird again? When’s the last time we weren’t weird? Touché. _Hey, man_. Nope. Not now. Not today. Not today. He started sketching. Her hair was hiding part of her face. She tried moving it back, but it refused to obey her. She changed her position. And then changed it again a few minutes later. We’re not sitting still, today, I see. Okay. He drew her slender hands; one was holding her book, the other a cigarette. That was the moment when she decided to take her coat off. Okay, we’re starting over. A head of rebellious hair. A face he could barely see. A nose that peaked out of it. An ample shirt around her arms. He drew her legs and laughed at his Denim bit. Her thighs, her calves, her feet. He had her. Time to give it some detail.

**Rey**

She had noticed him the very moment he had appeared. _Okay, how?_ She didn’t get a good enough look at him, so she had to wait for him to walk around the parc and hope that he’d sit. He did sit. _Who are you and how dare you make me so wet in my own dream?_ He started drawing. _Buildings, eh? They’re nice. I like buildings, too. Passed right by a beautiful one yesterday._ Come on, Rey, he’s not drawing the building and you know that. _No, I don’t._ Yes, you do. I’m betting my entire bank account – _my bank account_ – yeah, whatever –, that he’s drawing you. _And why would he do that? That’s weird._ Not in France. _What?_ Yeah, it’s romantic, here. _I’m pretty sure drawing people without their knowledge and consent is weird everywhere_. Eh. Remember when he touched his hair, yesterday? _Yeah…_ Hot, right? _Ugh, I guess_. What should we do? _What do you mean?_ Well, there definitely is some weird, French artist vibe going on here. _So?_ I don’t know, you tell me. I say we go talk to him. Ten pounds on a bumbling idiot. _Ten pounds for you to refrain from speaking ever again_. You can’t silence me. _Says who?_ Says I. I’m flushing your cheeks, right now, honey. I’m doing that thing in your stomach. I’m the reason for your elevated heartbeat. I flowed between your legs yesterday. _You fucking twat_. Yes, yours. And so much more. _Are you unaware of the fact that I’m grieving my entire life, right now?_ How could she feel attracted to anyone? It was beyond her. Except for her adoptive father and her best friend, men’s performance in her life had been quite disappointing, to say the least. There just wasn’t anyone she could trust. So, no. No attraction to Awkward-Man. _I speak it into existence._ But we’re getting up and walking towards him so we can talk to him, right? _I hate you._

**Ben**

Okay, that looks good. Ben was satisfied with his work. Yeah, she looks good. He smiled at the piece. Beautiful sad-looking girl. He looked up to see if something had escaped him. His stomach sank. The totality of her had escaped him. She was gone. He stared at the now free column. _Ha ha ha ha ha._ Leave me alone. _Oh, no. This is too good. I’m going to have so much–_

“Drawing people, eh?” a voice said behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladies and gentlemen... The cliffhanger!


	6. I Never Knew the Charm of Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boy meets girl and girl meets boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like this one!

**Rey**

He froze, but only for half a second. Awkward-slash-kinda-hot-Man got up and turned around to face her. He was tall. Like, tall. He had broad shoulders, and she guessed a large torso underneath his shirt. His nose was very present in the middle of his face. You just couldn’t miss it. Yet it had its place. As for his lips, they were thick. Pouty. Big. Big like the hands that were clutching his sketchbook. His expression was one of total embarrassment. He couldn’t escape it. His lips moved slightly without producing a single sound. Rey hoped that his English was better than his countrymen’s.

“Yes,” he said, very unlike a Frenchman. “But it’s not… See, I’m an artist and, uh…” Oh. American. Okay.

“Show me,” she demanded. He frowned. “You can’t draw me without my permission. It’s my likeness.”

“I’m pretty sure I can draw anyone as long as I don’t make money off of their likeness.” Less-and-less-Awkward-but-still-a-little-nonetheless-Man said.

“Just show me the thing, will you?”

**Ben**

The girl practically took the sketchbook from him. Not quite a girl, though, now that he could see her up close. A young, beautiful woman. He noticed her small, thin nose, her perfect teeth (that would be a delight to draw), her brown eyes (he committed them to memory then and there), her slightly rosy cheeks. She looked at herself and he looked at her. He could not take his eyes off her.

“I’m Rey, by the way,” she said without looking up. She could have said her name was Perfection and it would have made as much sense. She just was actual perfection. Play it cool, man. Play it cool.

“My name is Ben Solo,” he declared in the clumsiest manner, possibly ever. His inflexion even made it sound like a question. This made her look up. The sun was on her face, so she closed an eye when she said:

“Alright, Ben Solo. Hi.” There. Her teeth. Her smile. Play it cool. “You’re pretty good.” He thanked her. “You say you’re an artist?” He nodded. Remember when you said you said you’d never say that? Not. Now. Perfection. Right. Here. “Is this all you have?” No, it wasn’t. “Where’s the rest?” At his place. “Hm. Bit too early for that, isn’t it?” He laughed. Is this a good laugh? I have many other, better laughs. Rey gave him his book back and said nothing for a moment. She looked around, then back at him.

“Nice place, right?”

“Uh, yes,” he replied. “Yeah, nice place.”

“Yup…”

Another pause.

“Why me?”

“Sorry?”

“Why me? Why are you drawing me?”

Because you’re perfect? Nope, not telling the truth. No, sir. Find something else.

“Well, uh… I think you’re… elegant. And you dress well. You’re a good model. Good model. Very natural. Nice features.” Okay, stop.

**Rey**

Say thank you, Rey. The hot man said you have nice features. _Do I have to?_ Yes, I want to see what he’ll say next. She waited. He wasn’t saying anything. Say something, Rey.

“So,” she said without knowing what was coming next. Let’s play it safe. “What is this drawing business about?”

“I, uh, I have this friend.” Ben Solo replied. “He’s a gallerist. He’s got this exhibition coming in a few months and he needs me to do some pieces for him.”

“About lone women in parcs?”

He laughed, obviously embarrassed. “No, no, not at all. It’s a thing on eyes, actually.” Eyes? “Yeah, window to the soul and all that.” Window to the soul. How much were her own eyes saying, she wondered? _Not too much, I hope._ Well, I know what _I_ am saying. _Oh, God, shut up!_ Rey asked where the gallery was located. In the third _arrondissement_ , he said. She couldn’t judge his French, speaking almost none herself. She asked for the address. His eyebrows went high, but he gave it to her after looking for it in his phone. Okay, what are we doing? _I don’t know, don’t judge me_. I’m not judging, I am loo-king. Looking at you! _I swear, if you flush my cheeks right now, I will murder you._ Okay, okay, no flushing of the cheeks! _Okay, let’s go_. Going!

“Right. See you around, Ben Solo.” She walked away before he could reply. _What are we doing?_

**Ben**

Perfection walked away, leaving him standing there like an idiot tree. Her name is Rey. What? Her name. Is Rey. Yes. Right. Rey. What should we do, now? I kinda want to dance. There are people around. Yes, there are. We should wait until we’re home. Totally. Ben picked his stuff up and walked toward the exit that would get him closer to _rue de Richelieu_. There was a new spring in his step, the presence of which he did not become aware of for a few minutes. His whole height was deployed, making him look and feel like a giant among men. Hi, mom, I’m in love. Yes, I have spoken to her, this time. He would not have been surprised to see his chest burst due to the accumulated pressure of a thousand butterflies. They were fluttering and dancing inside him, which procured him the most delicious feeling. And then he connected some dots that made the butterflies stop for a second. Wait. She’s going to see Hux. He pulled his phone out his pocket. Pickuppickuppickuppickup.

“Hi, this is Tim Hux,” the recording began. Shit. He tried again. Hi, this is Tim Hux. Hi, this is Tim Hux. Finally, Ben resorted to sending him a text. But what could he say? Hey, man, an absolute diamond of a woman is coming to see you right fucking now to make sure I’m legit and not a creep, can you be cool for me? He wrote it to see how it looked. Bit much, he thought.

_Someone is coming to see you right now to make sure I’m legit. Can you be cool?_ Send.

**Rey**

Rey entered the gallery’s address in her phone. A twenty-five-minute walk or a three-station _métro_ ride. The tube it would be. There was an entrance on _place Colette_ that was vastly different than the others. No usual dirty green structure for this station, no ma’am. This one was an ensemble of grey beads interspaced with colourful ones. Thing was, one had to have a ticket to go that way, so no entry through the shiny gate. One of the other entrances was situated on _place du Palais-Royal_. She went down that way. Rey exchanged a coin against a ticket at one of the machines and went to the Line 1 platform. The corridors were hot, smelly, and crowded. _Just like home._ She was supposed to take the _Château de Vincennes_ direction and get off at _Hôtel de Ville_. The train was due in two minutes. Bright, white lights shone down on her from the tiled ceiling. The automated train made its entrance and swallowed her to then lead her through the maze of the Parisian underworld. The next station, _Louvre-Rivoli_ , was darkly lit and had an unusual décor. After that, _Châtelet_. Almost as many people got off as boarded the train. Rey had been told by someone (she could not remember who) to avoid this station as much as possible.

“It’s an actual maze,” the person had said. “And I suspect that the gates of hell are located somewhere around there, too.”

When the train stopped at _Hôtel de Ville_ , she took the exit that would get her on _rue Lobau_. And that street was perpendicular to… _Wow, Rivoli. How long is this bloody street?_ She took another look at her phone. This part of the city was called the _Marais_. No looking up the history, this time: she was investigating. The first street that was opened to her was the _rue des Archives_. She went that way. Drawn on the ground and flown up in the air, displayed on terraces, the gay pride flag ornamented the street. A top that barely concealed the muscles that he obviously wanted to display, plus the tiniest dog trying to keep up with him? Check. Skinny shorts so tight that Rey wondered how his junk could breathe? Check. A musical laugh coming from a terrace on the other side of the street? Check. Dressed in leather from head to toe with a good number of chains? Check, but man, aren’t you hot in these? Rey looked and smiled, also noticing the tourists, the other natives of the quarter, and of course, the gay men who didn’t fit in any of the clichés she had witnessed. What freedom exuded from this place! Apart from the gay quarter, this also was quite the rich people quarter, because on her left, big, expensive brands’ stores succeeded each other. Expensive sound equipment that you can only dream of? Check. Those senselessly expensive clothes that you’ll never wear, or maybe, like, one ever, as a treat, but it wouldn’t fit with anything else in your dressing because it’s _that_ piece of clothing? Check. These jewels that you say you don’t need nor want, yet that you wouldn’t actually mind having if they magically presented themselves to you? Check and check.

Rey walked on, relishing in the way Paris presented itself to her. She hadn’t been to the Eiffel tower, nor had she seen the _Arc de Triomphe_. That was the kind of pretty-fun tourist shit that _he_ would have been enchanted by. Rey didn’t have a checklist. She just had time. Well, not that much anymore. This was day five of her solo honeymoon. Only four to go. And then she’d have to go back and, uh… start again. Go back to her life. It terrified her. She had failed at securing a future for herself. Although _he_ was an idiot wanker, Rey couldn’t help asking herself what _she_ had done to deserve such a fate. Why did people run away from her? Was there a stain on her soul she wasn’t aware of? A cardinal sin she had committed the day she was born? And what was that smell? _Ooh, hot dogs!_ There was a bit of a queue, so she waited. This was too difficult. Home was _him_ , but it was also her. Her place, her job, her father, her friends. Yet she couldn’t go back. The sense of escape that this trip to Paris had given her felt like the purest gulp of air one could ever breathe. She wasn’t defined by her failures, here. Nobody knew her. The city didn’t know her. It wouldn’t judge her. She could be anyone. She could be part of a new Lost Generation. _We’re closing in on a century, now, aren’t we? Time for new blood._

“Bonjour! Madame? Bonjour!”

She looked up. “Oh, um… Désolée,” she tried. The man smiled and asked her what she’d have in that fabled, terrible French accent that everyone had warned her about. But he was trying, so she gave him that. He had penetrating green eyes that carried a certain amount of charm, and he seemed to know it, because he was all smiles with her. He asked her where she was from, what she was doing here.

“I’m an astrophysicist,” she lied. “I’m here for a conference on distant solar systems. It starts tomorrow, so I thought I’d walk around the city.” _Why am I lying?_ Don’t ask me. I like it, though. _Am I even good at it?_ I don’t know.

“And a beautiful city it is,” he said, leaning down towards her from his slightly elevated platform. “This place is even cooler at night; you should come back then.”

“Okay, maybe I will.” She noticed that he wasn’t the one preparing the food. There were two guys behind him who were doing all the work. This guy was just taking orders, repeating them to his employees, and receiving the money. _Wow_. Wanker? _Wanker_. He took another order, put some money in the tin, and then received her hot-dog from the hands of one of his employees. He added a napkin to it, put on the counter, gave her the price. Rey paid and, although she could have had a seat on one of the two free stools, she walked away to eat in peace.

She took a right on _rue des Blancs Manteaux_ , deciding to trust her instincts rather than the map of the world in her pocket. At the end of that small street, she found a small parc and decided to sit there to finish her food. This parc had been designed with children in mind: there were structures for them to play in. However, they remained empty. Too early for them to come out to play, surely. Rey sat on a bench for a while. _Kids_. I’m not against it. _Neither am I. I think._ We still have time. _Yeah, we do. We’re still young and sexy._ And we’ll be for a long time. _I’m taking your word on that._ Just don’t eat hot-dogs every day. _You got it_. Cheers. Her legs started itching at some point, which was body for _let’s move_ _and investigate Awkward-Man_. Ben Solo. _Yes, Ben Solo_. _Cool name_. Cool mane of hair. _Shh_.

Back on the street, Rey took an immediate left to find herself on _rue Vieille du Temple_. She walked all the way up that street to a crossroads that would deliver her to her destination. She checked for the number on her phone, and then looked back up. Even if she didn’t have that information, she would have found the gallery. There were painters working on the facade. The olive was disappearing under a navy blue with touches of orange. A redheaded man was standing in front of it and smoking a cigarette, surveying the slow progress. She walked up to him with her own and asked for a lighter.

“Here you go,” he said with a smile and an Irish accent. Where the hell were the French in their own country? “Chelsea?” he asked. Rey nodded. How did he know? “I guess I have an ear for the oppressor’s accent. Sorry, that was uncalled for. I’m Hux. Tim.” He offered her his hand. She shook it.

“Is this your gallery?” she asked as innocently as she could.

“All mine, yeah. Although, not for long if things don’t change. That’s why I’m, uh… repainting my facade.”

He sounded defeated already. She asked him what he meant.

“Well, speaking of oppressor, there’s this British gallerist who wants to expand and get a foothold here. Ever heard of Gwen Phasma?”

She had, in fact, heard of Gwen Phasma. “She’s pretty big, isn’t she? I mean, literally _and_ in the art world.”

“Yeah. You know, the worst thing about her is how nice she is. She wants to buy me out, but she’s so nice about it, it’s giving me nightmares. I hate her fucking guts.” He turned to her, half-joking: “Hey, are you an envoy? A spy? Here I am, spilling my hatred for your hypothetical boss, and for all I know, you might be trying to get some information out of me, or something.”

“No, I’m here about something else.” Rey said. Hux sighed with relief. “Do you know Ben Solo?”

“Old Ben?” Hux asked. Rey frowned. How old was he? He didn’t look _that_ old. Hux noticed her confusion. “Don’t worry, I’m the only one calling him that. It’s his… behaviour. It’s like he comes from another century. He’s an old soul in a body we all want. What do you want with Old Ben?”

“He’s drawing me for your next exhibition.”

Hux was about to take another puff from his cigarette but stopped his movement mid-air. He turned to face Rey with his whole body. And then he looked at her. _Really_ looked at her. Who was she with? What did he mean? An agency, or something? Was she a model? Nope, just me, just Rey. Cool name. Thanks. How do you know him, where did you two meet? At the, um… _Colonnes de Burden?_ Buren, he corrected her. Yes, those. And? And what? Well, how did it happen? Well, he was drawing me, I noticed him, went to talk him to make sure he wasn’t a cute weirdo.

“Well, I’m sorry, but he _is_ a cute weirdo. He’s alright, though. So, are you going to do it?”

“Do what?” Rey asked.

Hux raised an eyebrow. “Did he not ask you to pose for him?”

“I don’t think I gave him that opportunity,” Rey apologized.

“I don’t think he would have even if you had.” Hux countered with another kind of sigh. It sounded like the disappointed kind. “Do you have a minute?” She did. “Do you want to come in?” Why not.

He stomped his cigarette butt on the floor, which Rey disapproved of. She looked around for a trash can, but there wasn’t one to be found. Hux, who had looked behind him when he had noticed that she wasn’t following, understood her discomfort and apologized, but not without saying that although this was no excuse, Paris was dirty enough that one or two butts wouldn’t change things dramatically. He nonetheless went through his pockets and found a tissue that he used to hold both their butts.

“Wouldn’t want to make the new model run away with my rotten sense of environmental issues,” he joked. She followed him inside.

The opening revealed a gallery that could hold a few typical suburban British houses and still have space overhead. The wooden floor had evidently been freshly waxed, for it produced the most exquisite smell. On either side of them, the tall, white walls were silently waiting for something new to display and give them life. Hux walked quickly to the end of the gallery, Rey behind him. He got a bunch of keys out of his pocket, searched for the right one, and when he found it, opened the door, and let her go first. This room was like a small vault. There were sleeping paintings and drawings all over. Hux moved some boxes, some rolling racks, and shelves, before finding what he was looking for. It was a rectangle frame covered with a drape. He took it off and revealed his own smiling face. That Hux was a bit younger, beardless, and looked much happier than the flesh and bones one she was talking to. And what bright brown eyes he had. The contemporary version did not carry the same eyes. That was easy to see. Something seemed to have been dimmed in them.

“This is me,” he said uselessly. “It’s called Tim. All pencil. This is a gift he made me after his first sale. And it was a big one. I don’t keep it in my flat because, well, I think it’s weird to have a painting of yourself in your own apartment. I also happen believe that this is some of his best work. This was one of his last great pieces. Maybe his second best.” He laughed bitterly. “Brilliant start to his career, but short lived. People were… how do I say this? They were ravenous for his next thing. He was going to be something. But then…”

He put himself back under the draped and into his place. Next, he took out a slightly bigger frame.

“Before I show you this one, I need to explain some things. For my own personal and selfish reasons, I need Ben to do something so great it’ll make money for both of us and save the gallery. I dropped this on him because I think that he can handle it, but also because I think that he needs it. I’m _certain_ that he needs it. This sketchbook shit cannot last, cannot go on. He’s _so_ good at what he does. His work needs to be seen again. _He_ needs to work again.”

Rey looked at the yet unmasked drawing. What was she getting into? Being the central piece to a depressed artist’s resurgence wasn’t why she had come to Paris. She had come here to deal with her own stuff. Yet she didn’t move, didn’t speak. Just nodded.

“There has to be a reason why he started drawing you. I don’t want to scare you, or anything, but… There’s something about you. He saw something in you, and if I may say, I think I see it, too.”

Rey gripped her own arm and started to pinch her skin. This was starting to become a bit overwhelming. Plus, the room’s atmosphere may have been appropriate for art pieces, but not for humans. She wanted to leave, _knew_ that she should, but her curiosity was getting the better of her. She had to see.

“I absolutely shouldn’t show you this one,” Hux said before pausing for what seemed like an eternity. “He wouldn’t speak to me again if he knew. But I need you to _see._ ”

And then the drape fell. Her right hand was supporting her head at the chin, and she was smiling. She looked so real. Too real. It was as if a photograph had been digitally altered to resemble a drawing. Her smile was beyond bright. It was light itself. He had captured her brown skin so well that Rey could almost touch it, perceive it in a three-dimensional space. Her white hair was like a snow crown on her head, and it fell to her shoulders with amazing grace. And her eyes. A beautiful blue so much like water you could drink from it. Rey didn’t need to hear the rest of the story. There was no question: she was his wound.

“This one is called Voe,” Hux said in a low voice that seemed to come from so far away.

_Voe_. She was the reason he had stopped drawing. A broken heart. How similar to her own situation. The heartbreak that causes you to run away from everything that you are. Too similar to her own situation. It scared her. Rey wanted no part of this. Her own wound was too fresh for her to get mixed up in something so… No. No way.

“Yeah, I don’t think you should have shown this to me,” she said to Hux before leaving the room.

“Wait!” he cried after her. “Hey, Rey! Wait! Ah, fucking door.”

There was nothing he could do to hold her back. He had messed up. Bad. Hux watched her walk away, cross the street, and disappear. Defeated and angry at himself, he went back inside. He sat in his office without turning the lights on. His empty phone had been charging for the past two or three hours, and he had honestly forgotten about it. He turned it on. A few missed calls. Yeah, the usual. A few texts. One from Ben. He opened it. Hux stared at the screen, at the words, and then put his phone down. He looked left, at the bar he kept stocked up for his guests. Among other alcohols he didn’t indulge in, the bottle of whisky called to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so it's a bit of a bummer (it was for me when I wrote it) but this needed (and dare I say wanted?) to happen.  
> So, yeah, it is what it is, I guess.


	7. I Never Met It Face to Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Rey are troubled.  
> Someone comes to their rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I, uh... I like this one?

**Ben**

Because, all things considered, this had been quite the amazing morning, Ben Solo had treated himself to a meal in the Japanese part of the first _arrondissement_ after a good, long walk in the neighbourhood. This meant _rue Sainte-Anne_ and a few streets around it. He ate Miso soup so that the part of his conscience that was his mother wouldn’t bother him too much, chicken _karaage_ , _gyoza_ , and some rice. Sure, things could absolutely turn to shit, as they often did for him. _Oh, poor you._ But they also could turn to gold. He had made contact. Well, she had. She had come to him, talked to him, gotten Hux’s address from him. He just had to have read his message and not fuck things up. Don’t tell her too much, man. He’s cool, he’s pretty good, please let him draw you.

**Rey**

_No fucking way_. I agree. _Fucking… Argh!_ You can say that again. Rey walked down _rue Vieille du Temple_. She was so not getting into that. She was not a band-aid, a cure, an elixir one drank to be nursed back to health. She was a whole person whose life had been burned down, almost to the ground! If only that ginger idiot hadn’t shown her the bloody picture. One broken heart at a time, please! Bloody hell. These people. She felt like running away. Where was she supposed to go? Wait a minute. _What?_ We don’t have to go. Let’s just not go there anymore. Paris is big. She pulled her phone out of her pocket to write to Rose. _Fuck men, sometimes._ Her friend responded a minute later. _That’s why I’m taking a break from them. I need to cleanse my soul of all their bullshit_. _Now lemme get some pussaaaayyyy!!_ Rey laughed and asked her what she was up to. _Getting coffee, already dreading today._ Ah, yes, the Kaydel conundrum. Maybe she should give her call. Or not. One person she could call, though, was Finn. She tried him. Fortunately, he answered as she was turning the corner to _rue de Rivoli_ and about to go right. _No, sod that. Turning left_.

“I was watching the news and they didn’t talk about a British girl in the Seine, so I figured you were okay. Are you?”

Good question! How about no? What have they done to you? If they’ve forced you to eat frogs, I won’t be able to help you. That shit is disgusting and I’m keeping my distances. No, nothing like that. Okay, what then? An Irishman and an American walk into a bar and decide to ruin my day. What? She told him the whole story.

“This is weird and sad and messed up all at the same time,” Finn commented.

“I’m not here for that!”

“Rey, I know, don’t scream at me.”

“Sorry!”

“You’re still screaming. But it’s okay.”

He went on. She didn’t have to talk to either of them ever again. Most of what he said, she had already told herself. He wasn’t a great help. As much as they loved each other, there were things in their respective experiences that the other just couldn’t relate to. She listened patiently, waiting for him to say his piece. When he was done, she asked how he was, how Poe was. Both were good. They had decided to get a cat. Oh, what’s it called?

“Well, we don’t have it yet, we’ve just decided to get one.”

It was at that point that Rey realized that she had no interest in pursuing the conversation. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. Or maybe…

“Thanks for everything, mate,” she said to Finn before hanging up and calling someone she hoped might help. She took a deep breath.

“Hey there, love.”

“Hey, mum.”

They hadn’t spoken since _that_ day. And before that, apart from all the wedding arrangements, it had been a while. She was even surprised to hear her pick up the phone. It was still early in upstate New York. Plus, her adoptive mother wasn’t a phone person. While they had decided a few years ago that it was time to mend the broken pieces between them, mending took time. And great care. Rey explained the situation to her mother.

“I don’t quite know what to tell you, honey,” Katrina said in that tone that made people think she cared very little about what was being said to her. “I’m not in your shoes, I don’t have all the data.” Why did she have to use that word? It made her sound so analytical about everything. Maybe that was part of her formula for success… “My only advice to you, after what happened, would be to do whatever benefits _you_. Right now, no one in the world should matter quite as much as you.”

“Okay, mum, can we do that in a way that doesn’t turn me into you?” Rey pleaded. _A bit harsh, Rey_. On the other hand, hearing this sort of thing from her mother still had its effect on her.

“Now, now, you know very well that’s not what I’m doing,” her mother retorted. “You and I are vastly different animals, and I thank God or whoever every day for that. What I did to your father, to you, I did out of pure selfishness. I knew that then and I know that now. Whatever _you_ do, you must do it out of self-preservation. Nothing more. I believe that your well-being depends entirely on your ability to think only of yourself. But the most important thing, I would argue, is that you never know what the future holds. Someone closed a door right in your face. Don’t close anymore on your own.”

Rey remained silent for a while. On the other end of the line, Katrina did as well. Only the sound of her breathing indicated that she was still there. Her capacity for unembarrassed silence was out of this world. She could not talk for minutes, hours even, and not feel uncomfortable at all.

“When I did… what I did,” Rey was surprised to hear her mother say, “I was terrified. It would ruin my life, your life, our family’s life. But I _knew_ , in my heart, that if I didn’t do it, I would waste away. I opened a door out of that life, and it led me to one that I enjoy much more. I’m happy here, in this big house, on my own.”

The past flashed behind Rey’s eyes. The pain, the tears, the silence, the grieving for what had been lost. The long years her father had spent in apathy, doing barely anything with himself. She remembered the resentment she bore, the hatred even. She remembered acting on the feelings she couldn’t articulate, and how it had made things worse for everyone involved. And the day had come when the bridge had asked to be rebuilt. And so, it was, eventually leading to the reunion. Superficial, at first. Careful. And then, Rey had allowed herself to be a daughter to her mother again, and it had felt good. What had been broken had slowly been brought back together, and although the hurt was still there, under the surface, all of it could be beautiful again. It just took work.

“You can run away from things, Rey. Everybody does. However, at some point, you have to land somewhere.”

Rey was really moved by her mother’s words. Only in her solitude had she been able to learn how to be in touch with herself and her feelings. But as she had said, they were two different animals.

**Ben**

Okay, let’s call him, I’ve waited long enough. After he’d finished his meal, Ben had spent twenty minutes or so sketching people around him. The paper showed smiles, eyes shining at the sight of food, full mouths, and delicious food. But enough was enough. It had been long enough. Plus, his long legs were starting to protest their confinement under that table. He asked for the check, which was happily brought to him and swiftly paid.

He called Hux as he was getting out of the restaurant. It rang, and rang, and rang, and then ‘Hi, this is Tim Hux…’. Ben tried again. And a third time. It was indeed the charm. Hux greeted him, but his voice lacked… steadiness?

“Hey, man. How’d it go?” Ben asked excitedly.

There was only silence to answer him for a few seconds. He repeated the question, sensing that something was wrong. Hux was breathing heavily in his ear.

“I, uh…,” Hux began before Ben heard the sound of his friend swallowing something. “I think I messed up.”

Ben’s full stomach sank. “What happened? What did you do?” He was beginning to panic.

“I didn’t see your message. My phone was… I didn’t see it. She’s lovely, Ben, she’s lovely and I’m sorry. You have to forgive me, please.”

Ben froze inside. He inhaled sharply and tightened his jaw. His eyes became the eyes of a storm that was threatening to unleash on his friend depending on what Hux said next. Deep inside him, the snake woke up, tasted the air with his tongue, and smiled. _Ah, the festering smell of anger._

“I showed her the picture,” Hux finally admitted. “I showed her the picture, and she ran away. I’m so sorry, man, I thought–”

“What picture?” Ben interrupted him, knowing full well what picture Hux was talking about. And then he heard the name.

“Voe’s.”

Ben exhaled loudly to make sure that his rage was perfectly perceived and understood through the phone. Hux apologized again and again, but Ben had become deaf to his plea for forgiveness. Oh, the things he wanted to say. Ben hung up to spare his friend from the terrible words that were threatening to cross the barrier of his lips. And then he surrendered to Kylo Ren and his rage.

He walked fast, so fast, in fact, that for the second time in as many days, _rue de Richelieu_ witnessed a tall, gaunt figure taking long strides along it. As it had previously been animated by sadness and the faintest will to escape it, it was now powered by anger. Its venom coursed through Ben’s veins, giving him the stamina to walk with a blind determination, to violently hit the pavement with his heels, to make white fists of his big hands. _Look, I’m just going to tell you: I told you so. Can’t trust anybody to do right by you._ He let him speak. What could he say? Ren was right. _Especially someone like Hux. Poor sack of shit cried because his daddy was mean to him and left him a bag of money. Jesus-Christ, what a fucking joke._ It was because of this that the two men had become true friends. The common trope of the daddy issues. _He betrayed us. No one betrays us._ No one betrays us. _You see what happens when you get close to unreliable people? They betray, they hurt, they destroy._ It’s always the same. _Yes, it is. Look, man, I know we’ve had our differences, but I’ve always been here for you and I always will._ It’s just me, it’s only ever been me. _Yes, yessss. You and me. We let people get close, we let them in our heart, and look at what they do._ They’re all the same. _They’re all the same_. _I know it’s hard, but we need to stay tough to survive. Can’t let your guard down._ I told him not to show it to anybody. I fucking told him. _And what does he do?_ Ben wanted to cry. Why did this always happen? _Steel yourself._ He felt it coming, the wish to let it all out, the pressure from within, from years upon years of accumulated emotional hurt and inability to articulate. His eyes were starting to water, his jaw was moving left and right, up and down, fighting against itself to both let it out and keep it in. _We’re almost home, you can do it like we always do. Do it my way._ Indeed, he was passing _Le Nemours_ , yet showed no sign of slowing down. Two minutes later, as he was passing the _Café Blanc_ , he pretended not to see his friend who was smoking his end-of-shift cigarette. The waiter raised his hand, but it was his turn to remain unnoticed.

Ben climbed his stairs with great speed, feeling his anger subside but refusing to let go of it. He practically dropped his stuff when he closed the door behind him. Then, he walked to the kitchen, moved the tall, heavy fridge aside with a low grunt, and with his fist, added a hole to the two that already decorated the wall behind it. It did not make him feel any better, of course. He’d known it wouldn’t. It never did. Adding physical pain to what he already struggled with inside was a way of keeping in touch with it, keeping it close to him. It was most familiar to him. Anger, sadness: they were all he had known, the past few years. All he was used to. Anything other than that was an intruder, a stranger, an illusion, a lie. Never to be trusted.

Rey. The name appeared in his mind out of nowhere. Ben put the fridge back in place, thus concealing his shame. Not once since he’d hung up on Hux had he given her a thought. Well, there was no need to give her any now. Another failure, which he was used to. No point in denying the truth. Experience told him that he would always get the same result, so there was no point in trying. To try and try again while expecting a different result was to be mad. _It’s okay, man. I got you. I got you_.

**Rey**

_There it is_. At last. The end of _rue de Rivoli_ , or the beginning, rather. Rey stared at the number one. A building with a glass door when others like it preferred strong wood. On the left of that door, a Dutch shop that sold cheap stuff. She crossed the street and remarked that on this side, there was still a bit of walking to do to arrive at the beginning of the street. She had to go further to find the number two. Where _Rivoli_ began, _Saint-Antoine_ ended, and where that one began… _Well, if this isn’t funny. Place de la Bastille. Where you lot said fuck the king._ She walked all around it. A total of eleven boulevards and streets either originated or ended there. Tons and tons of cars drove around it in an endless carousel. Rey was part of it. She had gone clockwise and was now passing the _Opéra Bastille_. Another one? _Hell yeah,_ Paris answered in her mind.

Out of eleven options, Rey felt safer in choosing the boulevard that carried the same name as the _Place._ That was another ten to fifteen-minute walk. This relaxed tourist way of going about her business pleased her, for it filled her mind with uncomplicated things and left no space to Ben Solo and his my-girlfriend-broke-my-heart-so-please-let-me-draw-you thing. She was running from it, and fully conscious of doing so. Her mother’s words were tough to act on, as were words spoken by a person one resented. She refused to think about it, about him, about how earnest he’d seemed, about his eyes so full of surprise. No, stop. Where are we? _Quai de la Rapée._ She quickly rejected her own suggestion of taking the tube back to the hotel. Let’s walk some more. Let’s become so exhausted that there won’t be any choice but to sleep once we get there. Let’s have an uneventful night. No dreams. Let’s wake up tomorrow with a clear mind. Let there be no place for doubt. Let’s choose the right door.

Walking left, and thus away from the station, she arrived on _Pont d’Austerlitz_ , a much more practical and less touristic bridge that the one she’d used the day before to go eat her pasta. The pasta that had plunged her in a nap from which she had woken up with… _I said no_. Under her, the water flowed in one direction. She stopped and looked down at the current. Which direction was right for her? Oh, to be an unstoppable force like the river. To be nature incarnate, and not bother with anything that lesser beings said or did. To be ever changing and ever moving, never the same from one second to the other, to be unrecognizable and unpredictable, to go wherever her will led her without a single concern that wasn’t hers. To depend on no one and nothing but the forces that made the world turn on its own axis. Only when she left the river behind her and entered the _Jardin des Plantes (another dead king’s garden, are you people for real?)_ did she really think about it. What a solitary existence this must be. To be unrecognizable was to be without people, and therefore to be unknown. Always. This scared her more than anything.

Rey barely paid any attention to her surroundings, so absorbed was she by her own thoughts. She took an exit on the left that left her face to face with a fast-food chain restaurant. _No, thank you._ Running along the parc was _Rue Buffon_ , which was awfully close to buffoon. _Okay, Paris, ouch_. On the other side of the street, big grey letters spelled _Gare d’Austerlitz_. The train could take her anywhere, but she’d still be running away. She turned her back to it. Her legs were starting to weaken, but she refused to listen to them. She went back into the parc and walked under the trees. Her dark shoes quickly became sullied by the white dust of the gravel. _Should have stayed on the smelly, name-calling street_. According to her phone, _Censier-Daubenton_ was the closest tube station able to directly take her back to her hotel. That was another ten-minute walk from where she was.

Once on the train, she took a seat and, exhausted by her long walk, she closed her eyes and let her head lean against the window. The noisy wagon gently rocked her left and right, stopping here and there to pick up and drop its afternoon charge. Rey drifted away into her own mind, thinking of her bed back home, in her flat, and how she wished for its comfort and security. Its peace.

The sound of the alarm went from the back to the front of her mind at the speed of light. She opened her eyes, shot up, and got off the train at the last second. The doors closed behind her and the train left her to her panic. She had fallen asleep. On the tube. In Paris. _Come on_. _You can’t do that_. She looked up the wall at the name of the station. _Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre._ Oh. She was fine. It was all fine. _Opéra_ , where she should have gotten off, was only two stops away. Worth finishing by foot. _After a beer._ Quite right, we’re thirsty. She walked to the front of the platform, climbed the stairs, and walked out through the pearly gates she had observed earlier in the day. It looked like a crown on legs. Grey beads led to shades of blue, to purple, yellow, and red. As she had sworn to herself on the morning after her painful hangover, she’d never go back to _Le Nemours_. She looked around. There were one or two other _cafés_ close by, but she was sure that they were in on it as well. _Not paying a pint over ten euros, or however much you charge_. She took _rue Saint-Honoré_ and ignored the two or three other terraces that presented themselves to her. Plus, they were crowded. She took the third street on the left, because third time’s the charm, and landed in _rue Croix des Petits Champs_. There, too, she ignored the first two establishments. The first one was broadcasting bad music. The second’s clientele wasn’t… well, they weren’t her people. The third seemed quiet enough and was called _Louise_ , which was a cool name. She sat, ordered a pint, sighed, rubbed her eyes, lit a cigarette, and looked at the fourth option. It was called _Café Blanc_ , and it looked much better. _Ah, shit._

**Ben**

Looks like I don’t have that much to give anymore, Ben reflected upon seeing what had just come out of him. He folded the tissue and flushed it down the toilet, along with a much more significant amount of pee. Once more, the sensation had come and gone. Voe, who was determined to recall herself to his memory, had once again been used to get him to this fleeting moment of good he so desired. His dick was starting to hurt a bit. One to fall asleep, one to wake up. That’s four in two days, and I see a fifth coming before the sun sets. He looked outside his window. Too late. Before it rises again tomorrow, then. _If it does_.

Ben ate whatever, that night. Like a ghost that haunted its own walls or a robot without a real purpose, he took items out of the fridge, did things to them, cooked them, and ate them. He forgot what he’d put in his own mouth as soon as he put the plate down. The TV, through a documentary he’d put on to eat with, tried to get him to engage with his fellow humans, to observe and learn from them, but the large portion he’d just ingested put him back into a state of somnolence. He hated himself for jerking off so much, he hated himself for eating so much, he hated himself for feeling so much, he hated himself, period. What did the phone say? What did the people on social media say? Distract me, oh, global village of the all mighty internet. Regale me with your tales of cute cats, art, modern totalitarianism, and… mom? A video of his mother delivering a speech had been shared hundreds of thousands of times.

“As my father stood here, before his colleagues, in his own time, to fight for the American people, I stand before you now, fellow Senators,” Leia Organa said with unbridled passion, standing five feet one inch tall, “to urge you to vote for the Love and Compassion Act. This bill, that Senators Mothma, Syndulla, Holdo and I have been championing for weeks and weeks and weeks, is the first step towards a healing of the broken spirit of our nation! Too often have we seen our minorities suffer at the hands of…”

The video went on for five minutes, and Ben watched each second of it with awe. That was his mom. Fighting for her ideals, standing up to heartlessness as she had done her whole life. Adversity was no stranger to her. Each time she fell, she got back up. When her parents were killed by a dirty bomb, she got up. When her biological brother, whom she had known for so little time and with whom she’d had such a powerful connection, had passed, she got back up. Nothing could keep Leia Organa down. Ben realized that a few tears had been streaming down his face. He was as much an Organa as he was a Solo. Nothing could keep him down either. If he was his mother’s son, nothing should.

“Boooo,” someone said, off-camera, interrupting the flow of his mother’s speech. Now, who was that fucker? The camera told him. His mother knew him, of course, for he’d been a detractor of hers for a few years, now. With the utmost politeness, she asked him if something was wrong, to which he replied that her socialist bill would ruin America and all its people’s hard work.

“I hear you, Senator,” she replied before turning to look at someone the camera didn’t show. “If you’ll forgive me, Mr. President, I’d like to use some of the Senator’s own words from that lovely video we’ve all seen to say what I think of his intervention.”

She cleared her throat. People were worriedly whispering all around. Yup, Ben thought. There was another Organa bomb coming. Behind her, Senator Holdo wasn’t even trying to hide her smile.

“I will ask the Senator, again, in his own words, to _please_ suck my dick and choke on it. I yield my time!”

Ben exploded in laughter. Like the caption said: watch ‘til the end ‘cause she’s savage!!!

Yup. That was his mom. Still laughing, he gave the post a like and went to bed. The sun would rise tomorrow, and he would rise with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I like this one.


	8. I Never Knew My Heart Could Sing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Rey still reflects on which direction she should take, Ben is quite sure that moving forward is the only way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was tough. It's that part of the story you don't want to write because it's much less exciting than what comes after. But you have to get through it, and in the end, you might have something to be relatively proud of.

**Rey**

Rey let a whole day go by during which she did very little. Her mantra started with _fuck_ and ended with _it_. The most productive thing she did was respond to a few work-related emails that didn’t require too much brainpower. She needed just enough not to think about _things_ , but not too much, or there would be too much thinking about actual things.

When the time came for her to eat, she went out for a stroll in search of something interesting. After much deliberation, she ended up in a Japanese restaurant where she filled her stomach with delicious raw fish that presented itself in various forms.

_Things_ didn’t go her way, however. All day long, images and sounds played in her head like a badly edited movie that only she could understand. It revolved around Ben Solo, of course, and his face, his voice, the way he searched for his words. There was an emphasis on his lips, his shy smile, as if the camera were obsessed with them. _But it’s not. It’s not_. _The camera doesn’t care_. _The camera doesn’t want to be reminded, doesn’t want to be curious, doesn’t want to be tangled in all this. The camera is going home in three days, alright?_ The camera only shrugged, and Ben Solo remained in Rey’s head.

For the longest time, people have loved to say that there’s _something_ about this or that person. They can’t put their finger on it, but it’s there, and it calls to them. This _something_ wants to be thought about, investigated, discovered, eventually. It runs circles in one’s mind with a wry smile, yet it turns its head when one wants to look at it, so one has to pursue it or ignore it, knowing full well, and especially in Rey’s case, that they can’t ignore it. Rey did her very best not to think about awkward Ben Solo and his sob story. Yet, through her fingers, his name found a way in one of her emails, which made the recipient of that email, one of Rey’s clients, raise an eyebrow. When she went to the Japanese restaurant, she read something else instead of _Beni shōga_ , which was a bit of a stretch. As hard as she tried to focus, she failed to think about anything other than him. And she hated it.

**Ben**

When the sadness fell upon Ben Solo that morning, he refused to let it set in. There would be no start-of-the-day masturbation. He got up, stretched, and then, why the hell not, did twenty push-ups. After that, he went to the bathroom. Although he still had his morning face, his reflection did not displease him. He smiled to himself before brushing his teeth, all the while preparing his singing-in-the-shower playlist. It was important to only select happy, sort of swinging songs. It was capital for him to stay in that good mood. He thought he sang quite well, which only encouraged him to remain positive about his day. Yes, things went south quickly with Rey, and although it pained him, for he was certain that there had been _something_ , he decided – and in actuality, _forced_ himself – to see it all in as positive a light as he could. _Un mal pour un bien_ , as the French said. Out of this failure, an even greater success down the line. He had to believe it. Another quote came to mind, this one from his mother: _Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it, you'll never make it through the night_. It was her own mantra, in a way. The Organa mantra, to be precise, for he remembered that it came from her own mother. It had kept her standing, all these years, and it would help him keep standing, too. And possibly give him a sense of when to tell insufferable people to suck his dick.

Ben joyously saluted his friend at the café, and they even had time to talk after he was served. He drank his coffee while the other smoked, which bothered him a bit, but there was no need to say anything. Let him enjoy his poison. He took advantage of his friend being called back to work by the arrival of new clients to go on his way.

There was still a bit of a hole in his stomach, so he stopped at the _boulangerie_ on _rue Saint-Honoré_ that was close to the _Pont-Neuf_ corner and got himself two _pains au chocolat_. An empty stomach and you get grumpy Ben back. None of that today. We’re being positive.

Because the sky reflected Ben’s mood, he walked to his destination. Around half an hour later, he walked through the door of Hux’s gallery.

“Tim?” he called.

Hux came out of his office with worried eyes. “Hey, mate,” he said weakly.

“Hey, man. I’m sorry about yesterday. I was in a bad mood.”

He apologized, but Hux interrupted him and apologized more profusely. He was quickly forgiven. All was right again. Hux allowed himself to smile and stepped closer to Ben, who asked him what he was up to. He then said that he was looking at some local artists on the Internet. See, his entrepreneurial drive had never been stronger than it was right now, and he’d been thinking, you know, about doing more for the community, for the little brothers and sisters he had in that world, the artists whose work needed to be seen and recognized for what it was. It would be the next exhibition. No later than a month or two after the ‘eyes’ one. Could he handle it? Pff, of course. He was an Armitage. They may be bastards, but they were tough. It would be just like what he’d done with his father’s money: giving it away to those who needed it more than he did. He would do the same with his space, as long as he had it.

“What do you mean?” Ben stopped him.

Well, he really didn’t want Ben to know about this, because it was his own thing to deal with, but it had also been part of why he’d come to him. He told him about Gwen Phasma.

“Ah, shit, man, I’m sorry,” Ben said to his friend. “She’s super nice, though!” he added. Phasma had proposed to commission a few drawings from him, to showcase and sell in London, but he had refused. It had been a bad time, then.

“Oh my God, I know!” Hux angrily confirmed. “She’s lovely, but she’s also the worst. She’s an ogre with shit taste. She got Cardinal, last year. No, two years ago. Not a great loss, though, with Cardinal being a massive arsehole, but a loss, nonetheless. She’s gaining too much weight.”

“So, you need to be more solid in the bank to resist her.”

“Yes, I fucking do.”

Ben nodded. “Well, since you fucked things up with, uh… with Rey, I thought you could help me find someone else.”

Hux looked at him apologetically. “Yeah,” he said after a few seconds. “Yeah, sure, I’ll help you find someone. Got a whole lot a people I can get you in contact with. People touring the art schools, posing all around… Models! Yeah, I can do that. Okay, come on.”

They walked to his office. Hux indicated a chair for Ben to take to sit with him on the other side of the desk. He opened some of his social media pages on his computer browser and started scrolling through names and pictures. Ben adjusted his position in the somewhat cramped space and leaned towards the screen.

“Do you know Zorrii Bliss?” Hux asked. No, he didn’t. Dude. What? This woman… Fuck. Oh, yeah? Yeah. She’s a model and an actress. You gotta see her pictures. She shoots all around the world, it’s incredible. Okay, let’s write her name down. Ben recognized that she had _something_. Marvellous, piercing eyes. But it wasn’t quite the thing he was looking for. They went on. Zam Wessell.

“She’s a bit older, and she’s, uh…” Hux began, searching for the info he wanted. “Yeah, she’s Australian, so that’s a plane ticket and a hotel… Next?”

Ben nodded. Shaak Ti. Plane ticket and a hotel. Next. Same for Ashoka Tano, who apparently even had a clothing line. Wow. They went on until…

“Assajj Ventress.”

“Who?”

“Okay, she’s got a bit of a reputation,” Hux explained. “She’s pretty intense. And picky. But when she works, she _works_.”

Hux had never met Ventress, so it was all hearsay. What he knew for sure, however, because it’d been said enough time to be considered true, was that she didn’t participate in a project she didn’t carefully consider and believe in.

“She’ll never say yes,” Ben said, already defeated. “She won’t even acknowledge us. Look at her, look at us.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Hux kept scrolling. That was a lot of women. There weren’t as many men among the people he followed. Then again, it was his personal account. People are gonna people, Ben thought.

“Stop!” he exclaimed before he could keep his mouth shut. Was this…?

“Ah, shit, no, sorry” Hux apologized again. “That’s not her, mate. That’s, uh… This is Stass Allie.”

She looked so much like her. Black skin, bright eyes, white hair. But it wasn’t her, he realized. It wasn’t her. He sighed deeply, somehow relieved, but also sad.

“Okay, let’s move away from here and…” Hux said as he scrolled further down. “Bazine Netal. A train ticket and a hotel. Or a super cheap plane ticket. This is much more feasible.”

Bazine Netal. Model. Influencer? What did that mean? They looked at her. Depending on the makeup, the lighting, the decor, her eyes either were unexpressive slits or powerful instruments that had the power to dig deep into one’s soul. Her face could be closed to the world or open to its possibilities. As she appeared to him in her pictures, she either was forgettable, or a figure that could burn itself into people’s memory. Provided that he had the perfect tools and ideas to make her be the latter, he could do something to be proud of.

“We should message her,” Ben said after a bit.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright. I’ll prepare something and send it to you this afternoon. Or tonight.”

Ben approved. Not to think about her in _those_ terms, but the idea of having this Bazine pose for him felt a bit like a consolation prize. Yeah, definitely not those terms. She looked right for the project. Better terms.

When midday came, Hux and Ben went into the Jewish part of the Marais and stood in line before getting sat at a table in a space too small for Ben’s legs. After their meal, they went their separate ways, but not before Hux took the opportunity to apologize one last time. It’s okay, man. It’s okay. No, it’s not. It’s not fucking okay. Ben had forgiven Hux, yet he just couldn’t accept that he’d never see Rey again. They had barely spoken. It had barely begun. Ben didn’t know what _it_ was, but he knew that it would never be. And it bothered him terribly. It pissed him off. Anger came creeping in, but it wasn’t the usual feeling. It wasn’t the snake taking over, it was him. His conscious him. It wasn’t fair. Rey. He took the subway and was at the columns in under twenty minutes. He sat where he could watch both entrances, sketched without conviction, looked up way too much, but never saw her. Of course, she wouldn’t show. It just wasn’t meant to be.

**Rey**

She went to see a movie. A French movie. In French. Without subtitles. _Yes, I’m doing this_. _Don’t know why, but I’m doing it_. Needless to say, she understood one out of seventy-six words, but nevertheless somewhat succeeded in understanding what the film was about. A writer turned psychoanalyst wants to go back to writing, so she drops most of her patients. Thing is, a young woman who cries a lot begs her to help her, and after trying to refuse, she gets tangled in _that_ situation, and then it all goes to shit. _Wow_. _Even the French are telling me to stay away_. _Guess I should listen to the French_. Or not. As an Englishwoman, you should sneer at the French. They eat snails. _They do. It’s gross_. And they stink. _I mean, we’re really going into the clichés there, I don’t know if it’s the best–_ I’m trying to help you justify your shit reasoning, okay? You know that mum is right. Let’s try this fucking thing. Let’s do something. Let’s live. Let’s not miserably go back home. Rey thought about her conversation with her mom, the day before. Everything Katrina had ever done had been coated in selfishness. How could she follow down that path? Okay, but let’s look at you: how could you forget yourself so much when you were with _him_? You gave up things that you liked for him. What did he ever give up for you? Not his toys, not his posters, not his idiot friends. _That’s not a bad point_ , Rey thought as she lit a toxically delicious (or maybe the other way around, she wasn’t quite sure) cigarette. You were the selfless one and look where that got you. You just went to see a movie in a language you don’t speak. Who does that? _I’m sure tons of people do that_. Wrong! Only jilted twats do that. That’s you. Just try the fucking thing. Let the hot man draw you. Like one of his French girls. _We’re not–_ Oh, my God, I know! Just do it! Studies show that hot girls like us who let hot men like him draw them increase their chances of getting that pussy eaten in the process. _Hey!_ Hey yourself, bitch. Remember when you had the English Channel in your panties? Live a little, for fuck’s sake. Rey found it hard to disagree, though she really tried. Wherever this whole adventure led, it couldn’t be worse than what she was going through. _Let’s sleep on it_. I’d prefer to _slip_ on _it_ , but you know…

**Ben**

Ben went to bed without receiving what Hux had promised, which he half expected. When he touched himself, he didn’t think of Voe, but of many girls he had known, Rey among them. Something had awakened in him. A hunger for life. He’d never see her again, but she had come to represent this notion in his mind in the past few hours. Sure, there’d be nothing with her, but something could happen with anybody. He hungered for the many smells of a woman: her hair, her neck, her whole person. He hungered for the breath that preceded lips upon his, and the way they travelled all over him in a quest for the secrets of his body. He wanted to feel tangible and real under somebody else’s touch. He longed for intimacy, in all its aspects. Make it happen. Let’s make it happen. _It won’t happen, and you know it_. Let’s make it happen. He saw Rey in his mind. He invented the path from her neck to her collarbone, and then to her breasts, followed the line between them over her stomach, and then between her legs…

“Fuck!” he grunted in the silence of his apartment. That one felt _really_ good. He took his time to settle back down into himself, to let his breath get back to its usual rhythm. Just like his many predecessors, the tissue ended in the trash.

When morning came, Ben came again. There was a fever in his nether regions that he didn’t seem to be able to get rid of. But this fever meant excitement. It was optimism, it was hope, and it was a truly positive outlook on life. Something good was going to happen. He’d bet his right hand on it.

After his second well-sung shower in a row and his coffee, he gave Hux a call to see how things were progressing.

“Just come to the gallery if you’ve got nothing to do. I’m almost done writing the thing.”

Ben went to the gallery.

**Rey**

She was going to do it. The thought appeared the moment she gained consciousness after a good night’s sleep. Quite the long night, in fact. She felt very calm about it, because now that the decision had been made, it made the most sense. There was no explanation beyond that point in her mind, though. It just was going to happen. It was always going to happen. Deep inside her, a faraway wave of excitement made itself known and started to grow. In front of her eyes, her whole day spread in a succession of steps that would lead her to the beginning of the adventure that was Ben Solo. Her desire to know him was overpowering, as was the return of the sacred waters between her legs. They only were a manifestation, though. Her body had spoken, but only because she had been refusing to listen to herself. As she got out of bed and stretched, and yawned, Rey had a truly clear sense of the near future. It felt great.

Outside, in the street, the wind caressed her face and encouraged her, whispered gentle words that pushed her along. She decided that she would walk, that she would take her time. She needed to think, and she needed to make a phone call.

**Ben**

It looked good enough. He nodded to Hux. Sent. Ben went back around the desk and sat down, facing Hux, this time. All they could do was wait. Ben bit his lip. There was no going back, now. He looked back up at Hux, who was looking at his phone and scrolling. There was no point in dwelling on these feelings. What was done was done, and it was time to move on. How he wished, though, that it had been Rey. Hux’s computer made a noise.

“It’s her,” he announced, surprised. Ben went around the desk. Bazine’s reply painted her as rather enthusiastic. She even proposed a video meeting. The two men looked at each other. Hux raised an eyebrow. Ben nodded.

**Rey**

“Are you sure?” her father asked her. Yes, she was. Had she talked to her friends? What had they said?

“I talked to, erm… I talked to mum.” Rey admitted, unsure of the effect it would cause on her father. He breathed loudly in her ear.

“She does know how to take care of herself, that’s for sure,” he said with a tinge of bitterness he just couldn’t get rid of, even after all these years. There was another pause, and then: “Maybe you needed to hear what she told you more than anything I could ever say.”

Rey said nothing. She just took another puff on her cigarette.

“I assume you’ll need money to stay longer.” Yes, she would. She also was grateful that he had proposed it before she asked. Money had never been an issue for her parents, but they always had a culture of valuing it for what it was, and they had taught her that earning her own would give her that sense, too. Unfortunately, a big part of her own savings had been swallowed by a foolish enterprise called marrying a wanker. She thanked her father as she threw her butt in a trash can.

“Thank me by getting better,” he sighed. “It’s all that matters. Your mother’s right. Take care of yourself. Do what you want. Do what you _need_.”

“I will,” Rey promised. She hung up and looked around her. She took a deep breath. Although Rey had been awake for a little while, now, the day looked as if it had begun again right at this very moment. The world had just gotten a fresh coat of paint, and it looked incredible. In her heart, the first notes of a new and unknown melody started. She already liked this song. A smile appeared on her face. This day held the promise of something new. Okay, great, but how do we… how do we contact him? _Good question_. She could try the columns. Good idea. She decided to walk there. She wasn’t that far from _Place Colette_ , it was still morning, and since she had decided to embark on this adventure, well, this adventure could forgive her for simply walking to it. _Right?_ Totally.

**Ben**

“Okay, Bazine, great,” Hux said in as charming a smile as he could produce, which his beard helped tremendously. “Ben and I will work on those details and I think we’ll be able to send you that ticket in the next hour or so. Maybe two, maybe three. Does that work for you?”

It did. She thanked them and waved goodbye before ending the call.

“Well, someone’s hungry,” he continued as he closed his laptop.

“Already?” Ben asked. “It’s barely eleven.”

Hux’s head slowly turned and he looked at him as if he was the densest man the Earth had ever borne. “I’m talking about the woman who spent a whole hour eating you with her eyes. I did not exist for a full hour. It’s quite upsetting. Am I real, Ben? Tell me, am I real, or is my life a simulation?”

“I didn’t… Are you sure? I didn’t notice anything.”

“This!” Hux exclaimed, brandishing an upset hand toward him. “ _This_ is the reason I don’t invite you to the parties I go to anymore! Your tall, brooding… whatever attitude completely erases me when I’m next to you. You have this unfair advantage of looking like you do, and you have somehow managed to not get with anyone in… how long, again?

“A while,” Ben said in a let-me-just-clear-my-throat-at-this-very-moment way. Hux turned his whole body towards him.

“I swear to God, Ben. If she doesn’t end up on your canvas _and_ in your bed, I will deny I ever knew you.”

**Rey**

_Yeah, that would have been too easy_ , Rey thought as she walked away from the columns. _Think, think, think_. The ginger twat. _Well done, me_. Thank you. Rey practically ran down the stairs of the pearly gate style tube station. She had her ticket this time. _Okay, Line 1 is… that way_. She jogged through the corridors and arrived on the platform a minute later. From time to time, a wave of joy and excitement coursed through her, causing a smile to erupt in the middle of her face. She felt like she was glowing from the inside out. Each one of the cells that added up to the being that was Rey Johnson vibrated intensely. Life was calling to her in a way that it never had before. The unknown was so appealing that she was literally running towards it. The tube, however, didn’t share her excitement. She found that it was going way too slowly. _Come on, come on, come on_. When the train arrived at _Châtelet_ , she audibly groaned as people got off and other people got on. They were taking way too much time to just get on a bloody train. When, at bloody last, she got off at _Hôtel de Ville_ , she jumped off and resumed her jogging. It was only when she was out in the street that she remembered that she had no idea where the gallery was. Wait. Phone. _Yes. Fuck. Yes._ It was somewhere in there, in her browser history. _Come on, come on. Yes! There!_ Okay, we got it. How far? _Give me a second. Hm, it looks like… almost a twenty-minute walk_. A ten-minute run, you mean. _I’m not arriving there like an actual sweaty and smelly jogger._ Good point. Is there a better option? _Tube again?_ No, it stinks, down there. _Good point. Let’s walk_.

She could not help herself. When she stopped in front of the repainted gallery, she was sweaty, but just a little. She had walked fast. Rey let her breath slow down. When she was ready, she crossed the threshold.

“Hello?” she called. Her voice was shaky. _Control yourself_. No one answered, so she called again, at which point the ginger twat came out of his office. His name is Hux. _Thanks, I had actually forgotten_. Hux had his eyes on his phone.

“Hi, what can I–” he began before looking at her. “Rey.”

Well, he knows your name. _Yes, shut up_. She did not know where to begin. All the things she’d been thinking about for the past two days wanted to come out of her mouth, yet only one would. The simplest thought.

“Ben.”

“Ben?”

“Ben, your friend. The artist. The drawings. The exhibit. I’ll do it.” She smiled as she pronounced those last words. She was doing it. She said it again. “I’ll do it.”

“Okay.” Hux said. His face didn’t bear the proper look at all. Something wasn’t right. “Okay,” he said again, like the twat that he was. “It’s too bad, because he was just here, and he left, like, literally five minutes ago.”

Rey’s cells stopped moving.

“And we just got someone else to model for him.”

Rey’s cells started to collapse on themselves.

“But we can totally cancel!” Hux almost shouted when he saw her face. “You know what? Cancelling her right now!”

He tapped on his phone for a full minute, leaving Rey to stand there like a useless pile of organs.

“And… done! Good thing we didn’t buy her a ticket. Okay!” he exclaimed as he took a step towards her. “You’re doing it! That’s fantastic!”

“Can you please shut up and call him?” Rey asked as politely as she could.

Hux looked rightfully offended. Rey made an apologetic face. His expression rapidly softened, however.

“You know what, I deserve that one. But I won’t call him.”

“What? Why?”

**Ben**

He was already thinking about it. Proportion, balance, light and shadow, shading, scale, texture. Three drawings, three different expressions. Different looks. He would need to call his make-up artist friend. Did he still have her number? He pulled his phone out of his pocket and went through his contacts. Okay, where was she? She was supposed to be in the As, but since she wasn’t, he assumed that he had put her in the Ms, for make-up. Idiot. His scrolling stopped when the screen changed, and an incoming call appeared. He did not recognize that number. It wasn’t even French. He touched the green button.

“Hello?”

“Ben?”

He stopped walking.

“It’s me, it’s Rey.”

He turned around. Of course, it was. Of course. He had recognized her voice instantly. Rey. She was calling him. On his phone. With her phone.

“Yes, hi, hello, how are you?”

Ouch, that was bad.

“I’m okay,” she replied before leaving a space. “How are you?”

“I’m okay, too. I’m alright.”

Another pause.

“I’m at the gallery,” she continued. “Hux’s gallery.”

Ben started to walk that way. “Okay.”

“Do you want to get a hot dog?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nine will be even tougher, I feel. It will need a more careful touch. Things are happening, now. For real.  
> But you'll have to wait! Sorry. There's going to be a small hiatus, as I'll be taking my computer to the shop to be looked at. I don't know how long it'll take...


	9. I Never Missed a Warm Embrace

**Rey**

It’s weird, right? _Yeah_. Okay, just making sure. There was a tall, attractive man walking beside her, and she was a young woman whose fiancé had left her one week before the big day. That fact, every time it brought itself to mind, sucked, as Americans might say, _a whole lotta balls_. Did they really say that? Internal shrug. Rey kept on asking herself what she was doing. As far as she knew, she was following a strange instinct that pushed her toward Awkward-Man (real name: Ben Solo) and a hot-dog. Most of her cells told her to go with it, and to hell with _it_ being clearly defined. Unfortunately, no word managed to escape any of the two pairs of lips present. There was nothing to hear but the sound of their shoes on the Parisian pavement and the many cars that were passing them. A horn resonated and startled her. Rey looked at the car but quickly realized that she could not pay any attention to what was going on around her. Anything happening beyond this embarrassing sphere of silence was beyond her scope and was relegated to the _whatever is happening out there_ zone of her brain.

One thing that she quickly realized: this bloke had _looong_ legs. Keeping up with him resembled a fight. A fight against her shorter appendages and her breath. Why did I start smoking again? _Because, uh…_ Uh-huh? _Oh, look, tall, awkward man._ _No, but, really, we have a valid reason_. Yes, we do.

**Ben**

He felt like screaming. With glee. Did the woman whose eyes he just met before stepping aside to let her walk between Rey and him know that IT WAS HAPPENING? DID SHE KNOW? Excuse me, ma’am, have you seen her? Ma’am, please confirm that you have indeed gazed upon the heavenly being. Thank you. Okay. What to say, what to say? Unfortunately for Ben, the smartest thing he could say did not come to mind. To say that he was frustrated with his brain was an understatement. He chanced a sideways look. She was looking straight ahead. Yeah, first sign of boredom. There’s no other way to interpret this.

**Rey**

We’re not talking about the weather. _Works for me_. We’re not talking about… _I don’t know what you’re going to say but I agree. But what are we talking about?_ I don’t know, think.

“Cool weather, huh?”

_I’ll be expecting your resignation tomorrow morning_. Ben Solo, however, seemed to tie himself to that question as if to a lifeline.

“Yeah,” he answered with a dose of enthusiasm that the weather really, _really_ did not mandate. “Paris has always been nice this time of year, but this is something special.” There was a smile in his voice that she felt compelled to look for. Indeed, it rested upon his full lips like a gracious vacationer on the beach; a vacationer that did not consider the sight of his body to be required viewing. It just was, there to be seen whether you wanted to look or not. There for itself and glad to be. Their eyes met briefly, and Rey went back to looking straight ahead. A wave of warmth went through her. She sought to repress it, a big _nope_ resounding in her head. As idiotic as it had been, asking about the weather had made her conscious of it in a manner she hadn’t been before. With her coat on, it was almost too much. What would he think if he looked at her and saw flushed cheeks? And, as much for herself as for him or whatever he might think, she didn’t want to start sweating. The temperature had gone up since this morning. As gentle as it remained, it needed to be dealt with. She took off her coat and pulled on her sleeves. _Yes. Whatever might or might not happen, we are looking good_.

**Ben**

Okay, dude, slow down. He slowed down. The way she breathed through her nose indicated, once again, that his long-ass legs were problematic. Yeah, okay, but don’t walk like some Goofy-looking idiot, either. Walk well. What an effort it required! He realized, then, how unhealthy the way he moved his body around was on a daily basis. Yes, show your height. Maybe it’ll… I don’t know, do something. His back protested and then quieted down, understanding that this position was much better.

He had answered a question about the weather, and now he was racking his brain for the next big thing. Okay. Her name’s Rey. She’s British. Is she on, like, a work trip? That’s a question. What else do we have? Where’s her coat from? _Oh, it’s from that place_. Oh, ok, I don’t know _that place_. _Okay_. Hey, man, maybe stop having the whole conversation in your shit brain? Hm, good idea.

“So, uh, are you here on a work trip or something?”

**Rey**

Fuck. _Fuck_. _What do we say_? I don’t know. What do we say? _That we came to Paris to grimly celebrate a honeymoon that never happened because our piece of shit fiancé left us, just like our biological parents, and that it has brought everything back up but we’re sort of pushing it all down because we don’t quite know how to deal with the overwhelming pain apart from collapsing in tears from time to time and drinking and smoking?_

“No, just on vacation.” _Wow, you’re good_. The truth wanted to explode out of her but for obvious reasons she chose to keep it to herself. Maybe she could just be Rey, young woman visiting Paris for her own pleasure, just because she could, instead of the tortured soul and sobbing mess that she had been for the past weeks. She had her shit together. She was just _chillin’_.

“What about you?” she asked as she looked up to his long, dark hair and the way his nose bravely paved the way for the rest of his face.

**Ben**

I love you. No, not saying that.

“Uh, I live here?” Okay, one more time but it’s not a question. “I, uh, I live here. Been here for, uh, three years, now?” Stop with the fucking inflexion. “Yeah, three years. Close to four. I’m an artist.” No, I’m not, I never say that. I specifically never say that.

“Yeah, I know,” Rey said. Of course she knows, oh my God. Inside Ben’s mind, a part of him screamed “DUDE!” while another started crying and apologizing. Silence fell again between them. He took note of the fact that she was checking her phone every now and then to make sure they were heading in the right direction. At a glance, his suspicion was confirmed: he knew where she was taking him. She had taste, he thought. He gave her another discreet (he hoped) look. Everything about her said taste.

**Rey**

This is madness. I shouldn’t do this. I’m not… there yet. I can’t be. _And yet_. After her initial feelings about him and this whole thing, plus the apprehension that had taken a hold of her when she called him, Rey now felt a sense of calm as she walked alongside Ben Solo. The silence had transformed. From terribly embarrassing, it had gone to slightly more comfortable. They were less than ten minutes away from the hot-dog place from the other day. As they made their way there, she tried to calm herself. She knew she could walk away at any moment. And it would be okay.

“Hey, man!” she was surprised to hear when they approached the small shop. The hot-dog guy lifted his fist and bumped it against Ben’s. They knew each other? He looked at her with a yeah-sorry-I-know-him smile. “The usual?” the guy asked Ben, and he nodded. The guy then gave the order to his employee and Rey, after ketchup, heard the word _mayo_ uttered. _Wow_. _Ew?_ Her own order, with ketchup and mustard, was more American than the American boy she was sharing a meal with. They were served two or three minutes later and then sat at the small table with high stools that a couple clients had just left. Ben Solo, because of his long legs, sat sideways.

“ _Bon appétit_ ,” he said with a thick accent.

She tried to say _merci_ , one of the (maybe) ten French words she knew, but it didn’t sound like anything French. _I think it’s okay because he’s not that good, either_. Yeah, I think so, too. She took a bite. _Yup, still delicious_.

“So, are you rich, or something?” she asked, deciding that her irreverent self would be her best ally in this unknown territory she was adventuring in.

He chewed on a big bite he’d taken before answering. His lips, that she was paying absolutely no attention to, were moving back and forth before separating on the two shores of his smile. “Yeah, I guess I am. My mom comes from money, and my dad made his own. So, yeah, I’m rich. But not, like, obscenely, you know?” Yes, she knew. She asked what they did. His father was a retired race car driver. Had she heard of the Dragon Void? No? Well, she could look it up any time. His mother was a senator. Did the name Organa ring a bell? It absolutely did, though not before the moment Senator Organa had pulled her away from her nightly overthinking of what the rest of her life was going to be by putting her nasty colleague back in his place. It had been a great video, as the tens of thousands of reposts and comments showed. She had managed to be inspiring, ferocious, and hilarious in a short five minutes.

“Oh, you’ve seen that…” he said in a softer voice as he put his food down on the table.

“Well, the world wide web has seen it, I’d argue. She’s brilliant,” she complimented.

He moved his head from side to side, as if to say yes and no, but she dared not ask him why. There might have been something in there that he didn’t want to share. Rey surprised herself with this line of thought. _More irreverence, please_.

“What about you?”

This surprised her, too. What about me? _Honey, this is called interest_.

“What about me?” she asked back, not knowing where to begin and trying to get some time to compose her defensive exterior back up.

“I don’t know…” he began, “what you do, who your parents are, your opinion on time as a flat circle. Things like that.”

He smiled again. She found herself smiling as well, a third surprise. This is not going the way I thought it was. Need. More. Time. Just like he did, she took a bite, hiding behind her napkin ( _who even are you?)_ , and thought about what she was going to say.

**Ben**

Holy shit, is this going well?

**Rey**

“I’m a sculptor and an interior designer,” she finally answered. “And also, a scavenger of sorts.”

His mouth was full again, so he raised an eyebrow.

“I like to give a second life to discarded stuff,” she continued. He nodded. “Anything, really. I walk around, I go places, I go on some websites… What people don’t want anymore, I take it and I make it look good again. People throw stuff away without thinking, or without realising what they’re losing, wasting…”

Rey looked away from Ben’s face. The way she’d just explained her job… She had said these words countless times over the years, and she’d always known what they meant, but it hit her again: that’s me. The discarded girl that the most important people in her life did not want. _Let’s power through this_.

“What else…” she went on, feigning trying to remember what he’d asked. “I’m adopted.” For some reason that I’ll never know nor understand. “My dad is a writer and…”

“Oh, what does he write?” Ben interrupted her excitedly in the middle of another bite.

“Crime novels, mostly.”

“Anything big?”

“The Knives trilogy?”

He stopped chewing, incredulous. “Your father is Harlan Johnson?”

Here we go…main character catchphrase in three, two, one…

“I’ve never read any of his books, actually,” Ben said. Rey’s jaw unclenched. _What is this day?_ I don’t know. “But they’re making a movie out of the first one, right?” She nodded. He was done eating, so he wiped his mouth. The guy asked him if he wanted another. Ben declined, in English this time. She hoped he’d forgotten about the rest of his questions, that he’d focus on her father’s books, but he went on and asked the question she didn’t particularly want to answer.

“Well, my parents are divorced and so, my mom lives in upstate New York.”

His eyes narrowed, ever so slightly. Just like she’d perceived earlier that his own mother might be a topic he didn’t want to expand on, she knew he’d sensed the same about hers. If her birth parents were first on the rejection podium, she had been number two. As for number three, she intended on keeping it to herself as long as possible.

“As for time as a flat circle…” she started saying, straightening herself and beginning to smile again. “I don’t know. I don’t like it.” She paused. “Is it the one where everything has already happened and always happens and the past and the future influence each other and there’s nothing you can really do about it?”

“I’m not sure,” Ben shrugged. “Maybe?”

This made her laugh. “Yeah, I don’t like it.” He laughed, too. He had a good laugh. Frank, unembarrassed.

They quieted down and there was silence again. Its quality, however, seemed to improve by the second. Rey realized that they still hadn’t talked about the reason she’d called him back. She took a mental deep breath.

“So… the paintings?”

He tensed. Not quite visibly, but just enough that she noticed. “Mind if we walk for that part?” She didn’t. He nodded and got up to walk around the table to the cash register.

“Are you paying for both?” the guy asked.

“Yeah,” Ben said as he gave him a note and made coins jingle in his pocket.

“Please don’t,” Rey intervened. Too harsh? Both men looked at her. Ben gave a simple shrug, but the other guy’s eyebrows went up and his lips went forward in a _well, alright_ expression that she didn’t quite like. She felt heat rush to her face, so she looked down into her bag for her own money. She then checked the price on the board to her side, struggled with the coins, found what she needed, and paid for her hot-dog.

**Ben**

He gathered his thoughts for the first fifteen to twenty meters. His process wasn’t yet fully formed. Nevertheless, he tried his best to give Rey as much information as he could. It would be, he told her, a mix of conversation, studies of her face, photographs for reference. And who knew what else.

“How long are you here for?” he interrupted himself to ask her.

Strangely, he thought, she said that she wasn’t sure, that her vacation here didn’t really have an end date.

“I’m sure you’ll have to return to your life at some point, won’t you?” he asked her then.

If he had been looking at her in this very moment, he would have noticed a tightening of her jaw, something that indicated that maybe she wasn’t looking forward to returning to her life all that much. But he had not been looking at her. He was keeping himself from looking at her. Otherwise, he feared he could never stop himself.

They were now walking in the shadow of the _Hôtel de Ville_ , back in what he was sure he could now call their natural state of silence.

“So, do you want to do something or…?” he asked to break it.

She inhaled through her nose and raised her eyebrows, which meant, he was sure, that she was bored to tears and would rather jump in the Seine (which they were, fortunately for her, very close to) than spend another moment with him.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I really don’t. I think I want to take a nap.”

There we are. I knew it!

“So, when should we start?”

It was his eyebrows’ turn to lift in astonishment. His mouth opened and closed, like an idiot goldfish. Rey’s smile seemed to ask _dude, you okay?_

“Uh, I don’t know. Whenever you want.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah!” he exhaled. “Tomorrow, totally. Yeah.”

“Okay, Ben Solo. Text me the details.”

And she walked away. He stood there for a minute, his hands on his hips, looking around himself with a smile that he was sure made him look stupid, like he’d just won a trophy.

“Hey, sorry,” a voice said behind him. He turned around to face her again. Rey.

**Rey**

Why is he smiling like this? Oh, and now he’s not.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Where’s the, erm… the tube station?”

He lifted a big arm to his right and said _right there_ with a voice that, though it wasn’t his intention, made her feel like an idiot. They had walked past it literally two minutes earlier. _Good job, Rey_. Shut up.

“Okay, thanks, see you tomorrow,” she hurried out of her mouth, afraid of blushing again.

She sent a message to Rose that said _call me whenever_ and travelled back to her hotel. She was doing it. She didn’t quite know why, but there she was. She could still back away, though. There was no contract, nothing to tie her to him.

Rose’s call came around six o’clock.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked with concern. “I’m sorry I couldn’t call sooner, but I’m on my lunchbreak now, so, we can talk. Sorry, did I wake you?”

Rey’s answer was a big, long yawn and a thorough rubbing of each eye in turn.

“Are those good naps or bad naps?” Rose inquired. “I’m legit tired naps or I hate my life naps?”

“Hm,” Rey mused. “Bit of both, I’d say.”

“Well, you should hate your life, right now, so, yeah, you’re okay. What’s up?”

Rey told her about her day, recounting the story in as most details as she could muster. She could say these things to Rose. Rose did not judge. Rose only cared.

“So, let me start by saying that all of this is pretty hot and that I am rooting for you.”

“I think I’m acting out,” Rey went on. “I’m smoking again, I drink too much, I agree to have my eyes drawn by a stranger…”

“According to you and what you told me, the correct terminology is _hot_ stranger.”

Rey stopped talking and gave Rose the _really?_ face.

“Okay, okay, whatever you want. But yeah, you’re acting out. I think you should. Better that than… well, anything else I can think about right now. When do you start the, uh… the thing?

“Tomorrow.”

“That’s hot!”

“Please don’t!” Rey begged.

“Alright, I’ll think it really hard, then.”

And then she squinted slightly, gave a subtle hint of a smile, and moved her head in a way that Rey understood perfectly.

“You’re thinking too hard.”

“I don’t care,” Rose provoked with humour. “But for real, though, do whatever. As long as it’s not dangerous or involves religious fanaticism.”

Rey raised her eyebrows.

“I don’t know, I just wanted to say that,” Rose shrugged. This put a smile on Rey’s face. Rose, ever the lively one.

“What would I do without you?”

“You’d totally be a religious fanatic,” Rose laughed.

That was a good laugh. Rose excused herself and brought her lips to the camera to kiss it goodbye. Rey settled for a wave of the hand.

As she lied back on her bed, the ghost of her failed life visited her again, as she knew it would for as long as it took her to heal. She fought not to be overwhelmed by it and sought positivity in her present and her future. She had friends, family, comfort, and faith in her ability to overcome. Yeah.

_Do whatever._


End file.
